Governance · The Six-Layer Chain
From capital state to audit trail.
Layer 01 — The six-layer decision chain
From capital state to audit trail.
Straight from the Cycle-to-Throttle workflow manual: each layer has a decision function and an explicit list of what it cannot override.
- 1. Gate / Drawdown — highest capital-state authority. Defines the capital-state row, brake tone, and risk envelope. Cannot be overridden by Daily EV.
- 2. Weekly SDE / structural permissions — confirms whether higher deployment is structurally justified. Cannot expand beyond the gate cap.
- 3. Daily EV / Cycle P&L — tactical evidence. Supports or cautions near-term posture. Cannot redefine the drawdown gate.
- 4. Smart Open Exposure — subtracts active open risk from the authorized pool. Cannot create capital beyond it.
- 5. Manual Override — operator exception layer. Must be logged; does not erase risk reality.
- 6. Cycle Decision Log — the audit layer. Records decisions; makes none.
Layer 02 — Where it lives
Inside Governance.
This page expands one card of the Governance page into its own reference. For orientation, the module's own framing: The authority hierarchy is the single most important design decision in MARS. Gate and drawdown state sit at the top of live authority; everything else — EV reads, volatility context, structural diagnostics, even operator conviction — informs but never overrules.
How MARS uses this
MARS is a closed loop, not a pipeline. Trades produce evidence, evidence produces weekly grades, grades move gate state, gate state feeds the throttle, and the throttle governs what the next execution is allowed to be. No stage is optional and no stage runs on memory or mood - each one reads the outputs of the stage before it.
How it benefits you
Discipline stops depending on willpower. Because every decision point consumes the previous stage's output, skipping a step becomes visible instead of invisible - and the system keeps improving itself, since every completed loop leaves the evidence base one cycle richer than it found it.
The MARS operating loop: execute, capture, score, gate, throttle, deploy - every cycle feeding evidence into the next.
The governing idea
Connected inside MARS
This module doesn't work alone.
Go deeper
Operator briefs on this territory.
Deep dive — 01
Every layer in the chain publishes an explicit list of what it may not override.
Six layers, six decision functions, and six explicit statements of what each one may not touch.
Read the full brief →
Deep dive — 02
The authority stack, in order — and why the order never moves.
Capital state, then structural permission, then tactical evidence, then discretion — resolved in advance, not in the moment.
Read the full brief →
Deep dive — 03
Nine layers deep: the tie-break used when two modules disagree.
Hard rules, gate, throttle, cycle exposure, volatility, checklist, scorecard, diagnostics, R&D. In that order.
Read the full brief →
Every module ships in the complete MARS package.
One price. Eleven workbooks, three TradingView indicators, and the full manual library — $497.