Range

A quality gate: keep only options that are Relevant, Actually different, Next-step ready, Good-result fit, and Evidence-aware.

After a month of chasing fixes for your chronic back pain, your notes hold nine candidates: three nearly identical stretching videos, a specialist your cousin liked, a $400 gadget from an ad, standing desks, yoga, "lose weight," and a surgery forum thread. The list feels thorough, but staring at it produces no next step.

RANGE is a quality gate you run over an option set before comparing, keeping only candidates that pass five checks. Relevant: does it answer your real, live decision rather than an adjacent one? Actually different: does it differ in mechanism, actor, time structure, commitment form, resource model, or target, not merely wording, so the three stretching videos collapse into one? Next-step ready: does each serious option have an owner and a concrete next action, which "lose weight" lacks until it becomes a specific plan? Good-result fit: does it advance the outcome without hiding unacceptable costs, which puts the forum-thread surgery on hold pending real medical advice? Evidence-aware: are its unknowns explicit, so the gadget becomes "test the 30-day return window" instead of a $400 hope? What visibly changes is nine fuzzy items become four real ones with next actions attached. The spec adds one hard rule: reject anything failing safety, legal, or ethical limits before scoring, and skip the gate when your set is already small and obviously sound.