# How findings work

A finding names something specific that is costing you visibility, the page it applies
to, and what to do about it. Working through findings is how you use Shruwd.

Findings are re-evaluated after every cycle, and access findings every day on every plan.
New ones are capped at five per brand per week — a list of forty gets nothing done.

## What a finding tells you

| | |
|---|---|
| **What to do** | Numbered steps naming a specific page and change |
| **Where** | The URL or prompt the finding applies to |
| **Should move** | The metric you should expect to change if the fix works |
| **Why we think so** | The evidence behind it |
| **Confidence** | How much to trust it — see below |
| **Severity** | `critical`, `high`, `medium` or `low` |

## Confidence: how much to trust it

Confidence is shown on every finding, and the three levels deserve different responses.

| Level | What it means |
|---|---|
| **Observed** | A first-party fact. Shruwd watched this happen in your own logs or in a live fetch of your page. |
| **Inferred** | Not directly observed, but the causal chain is strong and every link is checkable in the evidence. |
| **Heuristic** | A correlation from comparing your pages with the ones being cited. A lead, not a fact. |

Do an observed finding first. Treat a heuristic one as a hypothesis worth testing.

## Working a finding

**Permissions:** editor or above.

Findings are grouped into three tabs: **To do**, **In progress** and **Closed**.

1. Open a finding from the **To do** tab.
2. Read **What to do** and **Why we think so**. If it does not apply, dismiss it with a
   reason.
3. Make the change on your site.
4. Select **Mark fix applied** and note what you changed. Shruwd records your current
   numbers as the baseline to compare against.
5. Wait. Shruwd re-measures after 14 days, so there is time for the change to be crawled
   and to show up in answers.
6. Read the verdict in the **Closed** tab.

> **Warning**
>
> Mark the fix applied *after* the change is live. The baseline is captured at that moment,
> and a baseline taken before the change is what makes the comparison meaningful.

**Access findings skip the wait.** Shruwd confirms the fix from your own logs, robots.txt
or page as soon as it shows up, on every plan, with no recheck spent. A robots.txt fix
resolves even if you never mark it applied.

## The states a finding moves through

| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| **open** | The rule fired and nobody has picked it up |
| **in hand** | You acknowledged it |
| **fix applied** | You made the change; the baseline is captured |
| **rechecking** | Shruwd is re-measuring against that baseline |
| **resolved** | The recheck showed real movement, or your own data confirmed an access fix |
| **did not move** | The recheck ran and the number did not move enough to call |
| **dismissed** | You rejected it. Quiet for 90 days, then it can return |
| **stale** | The rule stopped firing, with no fix recorded from you |

**Resolved** and **stale** are different on purpose. Stale means the condition went away
on its own — Shruwd will not claim your fix did it.

A finding marked **did not move** re-opens after 30 days if the condition still holds,
with a note that the previous fix did not work. That is worth knowing.

## Why a finding shows no recheck

Rechecks are limited by plan: none on Crawl, one a month on Starter, six a month on Pro.
If you are out of rechecks, the finding waits until next month and says so. Access findings
need none.

See [Plans and limits](https://shruwd.io/docs/account/plans-and-limits.md).

## Next steps

- [Reading your results](https://shruwd.io/docs/getting-started/reading-your-results.md) — what counts as movement
- [Plans and limits](https://shruwd.io/docs/account/plans-and-limits.md) — which findings your plan shows