> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.traversal.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Understanding results

> Understand how Traversal structures its root cause analysis output, confidence ratings, evidence citations, and recommendations.

Traversal's output is designed to be transparent, explainable, and audit-friendly, so you can understand exactly why Traversal reached its conclusions.

## Root cause analysis

Traversal root causes your incidents automatically. Each root cause analysis includes:

* **Summary statement** — a concise description of the identified root cause
* **Confidence level** — High, Medium, or Low
* **Evidence citations** — the signals and data that support the conclusion
* **Relevant anomalies** — detected deviations from baseline behavior
* **Timeline context** — the sequence of events leading to and during the incident
* **Impact estimation** — scope and severity of the failure

## Confidence levels

Every root cause analysis and alert assessment includes a confidence rating. Use this to calibrate how much human review the conclusion needs.

| Confidence | Meaning                                                                   |
| ---------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **High**   | Strong correlation patterns, consistent evidence across multiple signals. |
| **Medium** | Theory is plausible and likely but missing full visibility or traces.     |
| **Low**    | Weak or partial signals. Requires human confirmation.                     |

<Tip>
  Hover over any confidence label in the web app to see an inline explanation of what it means for that specific investigation.
</Tip>

<Note>
  Traversal's confidence rating reflects **data completeness**, not certainty. Lower confidence often means missing information — such as absent logs or traces — or ambiguous symptoms. Incomplete data leads to lower confidence, and humans remain in the loop for high-impact decisions.
</Note>

## Evidence citations

Traversal always shows its work. Every conclusion is backed by cited evidence you can inspect and validate.

Evidence can include:

* Metrics anomalies
* Log lines
* Error rate spikes
* Deployment events
* Code diffs (read-only)
* Upstream and downstream failures
* Topology relationships
* Pull requests

Citations are interactive — you can engage with them directly from the investigation view without losing your place:

* **Hover** over a citation to preview it inline
* **Click** to expand it to a full detail view
* **Follow the source link** to jump to the underlying data in your observability platform (Datadog, Elasticsearch, etc.) whenever available

<Tip>
  Source links let you verify the raw signal behind any finding — useful when you want to validate Traversal's interpretation or dig deeper than the summary.
</Tip>

## Timelines

The timeline shows the ordered sequence of events so you can understand what happened first and how failures cascaded.

Timelines include:

* When symptoms began
* When anomalies were detected
* When deployments occurred
* When related alerts fired
* When dependent services began failing

## Recommended next steps

Traversal may offer guidance alongside its root cause analysis:

* Diagnostic suggestions
* Remediation steps
* Runbook-style guidance
* Suggested team escalations

<Warning>
  These are **recommendations, not actions**. Traversal will not make changes to your system without your explicit permission.
</Warning>