A useful root event describes one change clearly enough that consequences can be conditional on it.
Weak:
AI in healthcare.
Stronger:
A regional hospital group replaces manual appointment triage with an AI-supported workflow over the next six months.
Current controls
- Time horizon: one week, one month, six months, one year or five years.
- Maximum depth: one to five, with three as the current default.
- Maximum branches: two to six, with four as the current default.
Depth controls how far the tree can continue. Branch count controls breadth at a generated step. More nodes increase reading load and do not automatically increase decision quality.
Brief check
- Name the event or decision.
- Name the affected organisation or market.
- State the meaningful time horizon.
- Remove multiple unrelated decisions.
- Choose the smallest depth and breadth that answer the question.
- Record important assumptions outside the generated tree.
If starting from a news URL, Cascade can extract a root event from the article text. Review that extracted statement before treating it as the scenario.