What is
behind the
number

Objective

The draft intelligence engine recomputes one roster-building answer after every recorded pick: the best candidate for your roster right now, two credible fallback plans, and what each plan costs if you wait. It exists to help you build the strongest whole roster across an entire draft, not to name the highest static rank.

Where it runs

One engine serves every draft surface. Sleeper, ESPN, and Fleaflicker public drafts normalize into the same board state, and manual recovery produces the same decisions when a live feed is unavailable. The war room, draft assistant, and manual assistant all render output from this model version.

• Live public drafts on Sleeper, ESPN, and Fleaflicker.
• Manual and pasted draft entry for league hosts DraftADynasty does not read.
• Arrival-phase guidance while you wait and on-clock guidance for the pick in front of you.

Inputs

Every input is visible with the recommendation that used it. The engine starts from the current board: which picks are recorded, which players remain, your roster, and your league's exact scoring and lineup rules.

• Current market value for each remaining player, source-labeled from the live provider consensus.
• Roster fit: whether a candidate fills an open starter slot in your league's lineup shape.
• Availability urgency: one minus the modeled probability the player survives to your next turn.
• Positional scarcity: remaining supply in the player's position tier against league demand.
• Modeled opponent demand: what the intervening seats are forecast to take, from aggregate market behavior - never from any individual manager's private information.
• Recent position runs and tier supply across the recorded board.

How a score is built

The engine runs a seeded, deterministic simulation of the picks between now and your next turn. The overall score blends the five inputs on fixed weights: current value 36%, roster fit 23%, availability urgency 18%, positional scarcity 13%, and modeled opponent demand 10%. Because the simulation is seeded, the same board revision always produces the same answer, which is what makes the output reproducible and contract-testable.

While you are waiting, the model discounts candidates unlikely to survive and promotes realistic next-turn targets. While you are on the clock, it compares taking a player now with the modeled cost of waiting one more pick.

• Plan A/B/C ordering with a transparent 0-100 score for each candidate.
• Survival probability to the forecast target pick for every candidate.
• Per-pick position forecasts for each intervening seat with a confidence grade.
• Position run forecasts: expected picks, probability of one, probability of two or more, and early/steady/late timing.

What you see

Every recommendation card carries its model version, board revision, seed, simulation count, and confidence grade. Plans name a verdict, a fallback, and the expected drop if you wait. Every number links back to the input list above, and a drafted player is never recommended again.

Assumptions

The opponent model treats the rest of the room as aggregate market behavior: it assumes seats draft near current market order, leaning toward need where the board pressures them. It assumes recorded values are fresh, your league settings are correct, and the recorded board is complete. When a value feed is stale or unavailable, the affected surfaces fail visibly rather than substitute a fabricated number.

Limits

Trades, sleepers, and reaches happen. The opponent forecast describes what the market is likely to do, not what any specific manager will do. Values move with injury and news faster than any cache refresh. A high score is a roster-building argument, not an outcome promise: injuries, coaching, and luck dominate single-season results.

• Survival probabilities degrade quickly with long horizons and small boards.
• K and DST coverage lacks clock alignment in some manual entry flows and is marked when affected.
• The model does not see another manager's queue, chat, or intentions.

What this model does not claim

• No public accuracy claim: DraftADynasty publishes no accuracy, calibration, or leadership claim for this model until graded results exist on the track-record surface.
• No mind-reading: opponent forecasts are aggregate market simulations, never knowledge of another manager's intent.
• No outcome guarantee: a recommendation is a second opinion, and the pick stays yours.
• No fabricated fallback: when inputs are unavailable the engine degrades visibly instead of inventing values.

How it is checked

• Deterministic output, opponent-roster sensitivity, and duplicate-free full mock behavior are locked by the draft intelligence contract suite on every change.
• Every live recommendation is written to an append-only browser decision ledger with model version, inputs context, and state hashes, so a past decision can be replayed exactly.
• Graded public accuracy evaluation is pending: ranking boards are snapshotted before outcomes are known and graded after each NFL week under the published track-record policy.

Changes

• 2026-09-24 - draft-model-card/v0: first public card for draft-intelligence/v6-phase-aware-utility, covering score composition, decision phases, simulation mechanics, and the claim boundary.