Incident Severity Tiers for Trading Workflows

Incident severity tiers help traders classify workflow problems without overreacting to every small issue or underreacting to serious operational risk. The beginner version is simple: classify the incident by exposure, repeatability, evidence quality, and account impact, then assign the next gate.

This is an educational workflow framework. It does not tell traders what to trade, does not manage accounts, and does not predict market direction. It helps traders document trader-defined controls, evidence, and review decisions.

Use Bucko to tag incident severity, store screenshots, log planned R versus actual R, and keep the next gate visible. Station AI can help summarize repeated severity tags for review, while the trader remains responsible for defining thresholds and workflow controls.

Why this review matters

Without tiers, every incident becomes emotional. A tiny alert typo can feel catastrophic after a loss, while a serious route-state mismatch can get ignored after a green result. Severity tiers separate the workflow problem from the trade outcome.

The practical risk math

Severity can be tied to R variance. A minor issue might create no fill and no exposure. A moderate issue might create 0.10R to 0.25R of unwanted variance. A major issue might create more than 0.50R of unintended exposure, repeated mismatch, or unclear account state. The exact thresholds should be trader-defined, but the framework makes the review measurable.

The point is not to make the framework complicated. The point is to keep operational risk visible before it becomes normal.

Review checklist

• ▸Minor:: documented mismatch with no exposure and clear evidence.
• ▸Moderate:: small unwanted exposure, delayed execution, or repeated evidence gap.
• ▸Major:: meaningful R variance, duplicate order, wrong size, or account-state uncertainty.
• ▸Critical:: uncontrolled exposure, failed flatten, platform outage, or repeated major incident.
• ▸Every tier ends with a permission state:: keep, observe, reduce, pause, disable, or escalate review.

How to use Bucko with this workflow

Use Bucko to tag incident severity, store screenshots, log planned R versus actual R, and keep the next gate visible. Station AI can help summarize repeated severity tags for review, while the trader remains responsible for defining thresholds and workflow controls.

A practical Bucko note can include the current route state, the evidence pack, the next test size, the permission gate, and the condition that moves the workflow back to paused. Station AI can help summarize repeated notes, but the trader still owns the controls and decisions.

Common mistakes

• ▸Scoring severity only by whether the trade made or lost money.
• ▸Using vague labels like bad, weird, or scary instead of evidence-based tiers.
• ▸Letting a repeated moderate incident become normal because each single event looks small.