Most design tools report a single score and ask you to trust it. Kairos reports how the score was computed. The distinction matters: a number you cannot reproduce is an assertion; a number you can re-derive is evidence.
This is the principle behind provenance, not persuasion — the standard Kairos is built to. It shows up in three places.
1. Deterministic, re-runnable scores
Every score on every candidate is a deterministic computation. Given the printed coding sequence, you can re-run the scoring yourself and get the same numbers Kairos reports. There is no model-in-the-loop adjusting the score — the axes (manufacturability, host-likeness, 5′ initiation, protein developability) are computed by explicit, inspectable procedures.
2. Multi-objective ranking, not one aggregate
The panel is ranked by Pareto dominance across all four axes — not collapsed into a single weighted sum. Why? Because a single score hides trade-offs. Candidate A may be better on manufacturability; candidate B on host-likeness. Pareto ranking surfaces both as non-dominated, and lets you choose based on which trade-off you accept.
Each candidate's rank comes with a per-axis explanation: which axes favored it, which flagged it, and what those flags mean. The verdict is a band (strong / moderate / weak) plus a pass/flag count — qualitative, never a number without context.
3. Flags that argue against the winner
A design report that hides the loser's flaws is persuasion. Kairos surfaces risk flags on the recommended candidate. In the public example run on Cytochrome c (UniProt Q6Q4H8), the top candidate carries an extreme_pi flag — and the report says so. That flag is an intrinsic property of cytochrome c (a highly basic protein), not a design defect. Naming it is the honest thing to do.
Why this is the brand
“Provenance, not persuasion” is not a slogan. It is a design constraint on what Kairos is allowed to do: it may compute, verify, and explain — it may not assert, obscure, or auto-win. The sequence is withheld in the public report (available to invited collaborators), but the scorecard is fully visible, because the scorecard is the product.
References
- UniProt Q6Q4H8 — cytochrome c (Komagataella phaffii). UniProt:Q6Q4H8
- Sharp PM, Li WH. The codon Adaptation Index — a measure of directional synonymous codon usage bias. Nucleic Acids Res, 1987. PMID:3547335
- Gustafsson C, et al. Codon bias and heterologous protein expression. Trends Biotechnol, 2004. PMID:15245907