Run an IRA on a real deal. Watch the system work.

How to read this walkthrough

The page below shows real engine output, not a polished mockup. Six segments. Six things worth pausing on:

• The verdict band. Not Ready / Developing / Near Ready / Institutional Ready — bands from a deterministic grader, not a vibe-based score.
• The gating axes. Two of ten axes (data integrity, financial consistency) gate the verdict. If either is below institutional-ready, the composite cannot be promoted regardless of the other eight. That’s why a single unreconciled-conflicts axis can hold the whole verdict at Not Ready.
• The blockers. Each one is a specific, named, evidence-linked remediation — not “improve documentation.” A consultant could quote from this list directly.
• The Re-IRA delta language. Watch the wording. “7 blockers eliminated · diligence timeline compressed ~6–8 weeks · Lower-middle-market PE rollup acquirers and Senior bank financing for buyer now viable.” Never “score improved C+ to A-.”
• The verification URL. Every snapshot has a public, tokenized verification page. The fingerprint on the artifact matches the fingerprint at the URL. That’s portable proof, not a PDF that lives in a partner’s inbox.
• What’s marked not_observable. When evidence is thin, the engine refuses to grade and says so. Look for the marker. It’s the discipline that makes the rest of the artifact credible.

If something doesn’t match between the screenshots and the underlying engine output, file a bug.

What this walkthrough proves

Most readiness products show you a polished mockup. This one shows you a real grading run on a real deal. The Cedarbrook payload powering this page is the same fixture that backs our integration tests — 2.8MB of extracted KPIs, conflicts, provenance entries, and decision gates. Every band on this page came out of grade_all_axes(), every blocker came out of derive_named_blockers(), every delta came out of compute_ira_delta(), and every screenshot on this page came out of the live platform UI rendering those exact engine outputs. If you find a number that doesn't add up, file a bug.

Different from a consulting deck

A McKinsey, BCG, or boutique readiness deck and an IRA artifact look superficially similar — both bound, both have charts, both name remediations. The differences are the parts you usually can’t see:

• Causality. A consulting deck claims the consultant caused the improvement. The IRA refuses that claim. It measures what changed between two evidence-backed snapshots; causality belongs to whoever did the work.
• Reproducibility. A consulting deck is regenerated by writing it again. The IRA is regenerated by re-running compose_ira() on the new evidence. Same engine, same axes, same thresholds — only the inputs changed.
• Missing data. A consulting deck imputes when data is thin and reads confidently regardless. The IRA marks the sub-axis not_observable and refuses to grade. Worse-looking, harder to fake, more credible to a sophisticated reviewer.
• Refused inputs. A consulting deck reads management presentation polish, narrative coherence, and tone as evidence. The IRA refuses sentiment, polish, and narrative as graded inputs — only documents and elapsed-time signals count.
• Verification. A consulting deck is a document. The IRA artifact is a document plus a public verification URL plus a deterministic fingerprint. A buyer can confirm independently that the snapshot wasn’t edited.

What is intentionally not claimed

The credibility comes from what the engine refuses to do. The refusals are not editorial — they’re structural, enforced by the grading code, and they hold for every assessment, not just Cedarbrook.

• No AI maturity score. We do not score “AI readiness” or “digital transformation maturity.” Those are vibes wearing a number.
• No causality claim. We do not claim a consultant or operator caused the improvement. Causality belongs to the people who did the work.
• No imputation. A missing input means not_observable, not a default zero. Imputing to make a band look better is the failure mode the discipline is designed to prevent.
• No narrative grading. We do not grade management communication style, presentation polish, or narrative coherence. LLM-derived sentiment scores on human prose are opinion in numeric clothing.
• No outcome guarantee. The Lift Ledger reads in observation language, not promise language. “EBITDA moved from $8.0M to $12.5M” is provable. “Our work caused 18% growth” is not.
• No customer claim. Cedarbrook is not a customer. It’s a realistic middle-market fixture used to validate the methodology end- to-end on real-shaped data — exactly what an early-stage product should disclose. Most early-stage products would dress this up as a “client engagement.” The artifact loses institutional weight the moment it does.

That last bullet is the one most early-stage products refuse to write. We’re writing it on purpose.

What you just read

A buyer or lender reviewing this page sees the system from the seller's side. They see a deterministic verdict that would survive their own institutional review. They see the remediations a consultant could quote, sequence, and prove. They see a delta artifact written in the language of institutional outcomes — eliminated blockers, cleared gates, unlocked counterparty classes — never “score improved.” And they see a verification URL that turns the artifact into something portable, not something marketing-shaped.

That is the difference between a readiness product and an institutional measurement layer.

Where this fits

Cedarbrook is the proof case. The same engine drives three paid surfaces:

• Readiness Gap Review. $4,500. Five business days. Top-five blockers a sophisticated buyer or lender would surface first. Credit toward a full IRA within 60 days. For owners and advisors preparing for sale or financing.
• Modernization Impact Review. $3,500 baseline + $2,500 Re-IRA delta. Independent measurement layer attached to AI / automation / fractional-CFO engagements. Partner-as-agent legal frame.
• Full Institutional Readiness Assessment. Transaction-priced. The complete 10-axis grade with public verification token, partner brief, and the Lift Ledger you see on this page.

The methodology is the same in all three. The packaging differs by audience — operators, partners, transaction prep.

The buy-side counterpart

Cedarbrook is the sell-side proof case — an operating company graded for institutional readiness ahead of sale or financing. The same engine runs the buy-side: an acquirer’s IC underwriting a deal, a lender’s credit committee testing a borrower, an LP reviewing fund governance. Falcon Services Q1 2026 is the buy-side walkthrough — the IC dossier, the per-cell provenance, the stress lab, the covenant forecast, the decision lifecycle — all rendered by the same engine that graded Cedarbrook.

Same engine. Same 10 axes. Same fingerprint discipline. Different lens.