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Score a candidate

A candidate is a new ad you want Cortex to evaluate against a brand's latest ready signature.

Requirements

Before you can score:

  • The brand must have a ready signature.
  • The candidate upload must be complete and verified.
  • The workspace must be writable.
  • The workspace must have available trial or plan quota.

If the brand does not have a ready signature, open References, review the bank, and build one first.

Upload a candidate

Open the brand, then go to Score. Use Upload a candidate to add the video.

Supported upload formats are:

  • MP4 (video/mp4)
  • MOV/QuickTime (video/quicktime)
  • WebM (video/webm)

The maximum upload size is 1 GiB. The browser may compress supported videos before upload to reduce transfer size.

Candidate uploads are separate from references. Uploading a candidate does not add it to the reference library and does not change the brand signature.

Start scoring

After the candidate upload shows Ready to score, choose Score.

Cortex creates a scoring run and opens the result page. While the job is running, the page shows progress. When it finishes, the same page renders the result.

Scoring states

  • Reserved: the request was accepted and quota was reserved.
  • Running: the scoring job is in progress.
  • Succeeded: scores and narrative completed.
  • Succeeded partial: numeric scores completed, but narrative generation or a secondary artifact was unavailable.
  • Failed: the scoring job did not complete. Review the candidate and start a new scoring run.

Partial results are still useful. The numeric scores are complete; only the missing artifact should be treated as unavailable.

Common scoring errors

  • No ready signature: build a signature first.
  • Candidate not ready: wait for upload completion.
  • Quota exceeded: usage for the current period has reached the workspace limit.
  • Trial expired: choose a plan before starting more scorings.
  • References not ready: wait for reference processing before building a signature.
  • Rate limited: slow down and retry after the returned interval.

Scoring history

The Score page lists recent candidate scorings for the brand. Use history to compare candidates over time. Remember that historical results were produced with the signature active at that moment. If you rebuild a signature, new scorings use the new signature, but old results are not recalculated automatically.