Research · The evidence base
Strong claims are cheap. We publish our limits.
The Five Capacities framework stands on a documented evidence base — and on an explicit statement of what has not yet been shown. Every paper states the evidence posture before the applications, includes the findings that cut against us, and quotes case studies only from public investigations.
Validation status
Where the science stands, plainly.
The instrumentation is sound: research-grade heart-rate-variability measurement, artifact-gated, with the right instrument specified for each job. The constructs are well-motivated: each capacity is grounded in published literature on cardiac vagal function, self-regulation, cognitive fatigue, and recovery. And the framework is not yet a validated instrument: reliability, factor structure, and criterion studies are designed — a seven-study program, specified in the position paper — and not yet run. Until they are, we don't use the words those studies would license.
Every read is within-person, against the individual's own baseline. That is a scientific position, not just an ethical one: group averages are a poor stand-in for any individual's dynamics, so the only defensible reference for a person is that person.
The papers
Six documents. Request any of them.
The domain papers are population-first — written for the people who run those worlds, with the same scientific front matter as the white paper. All are distributed directly; tell us who you are and which you want.
Five Capacities — Position Paper
The full scientific case: construct definitions, the verified evidence base including the findings that cut against a naive version of the framework, and the seven-study validation program. The document everything else defers to on science.
~22,800 words · 168 verified citations
Five Capacities — White Paper
Foundation, why the capacities matter, and applications across seven domains — sport, military, emergency medicine, motorsport, fire, law enforcement, executive leadership.
~8,100 words
Fire Service
Population map from suppression to telecommunicators, with public case studies quoted from the investigating bodies.
Domain paper
Law Enforcement
Patrol to command to corrections, with the fatigue research layer and public case studies.
Domain paper
Military
Conventional force to SOF to leaders, with public investigations as case studies.
Domain paper
Corporate
CEO to knowledge workers — including which use cases we judged and chose NOT to build, and the compliance architecture for workplace deployment.
Domain paper