# ADR-018: Soliton Scoring for Discovered Edges

| Field     | Value                                    |
|-----------|------------------------------------------|
| Status    | Accepted                                 |
| Type      | 2 — Design                               |
| Score     | 0.82                                     |
| Date      | 2026-02-18                               |
| Decider   | Conductor                                |

## Context

Discovered causal edges vary in reliability. Some are robust to
perturbation (soliton-like), others are fragile statistical artifacts.
The kernel already defines soliton scores on CausalEdge. Discovery
should populate these scores to connect discovery output to the
kernel's resilience framework.

## Decision

Every discovered edge receives a soliton score computed as
bootstrap stability (fraction of bootstrap samples where edge appears)
multiplied by effect strength. Edges below a configurable threshold
are flagged as low-confidence.

## Consequences

- **Connects discovery to kernel**: soliton_score field on CausalEdge populated.
- **Interpretable**: score = stability × strength, both meaningful to analysts.
- **Bootstrap cost**: N bootstrap resamples per discovery run (default 50).
- **Threshold tuning**: domain-specific; credit risk uses 0.60 default.
