Typed Decision Models under Prevalence Shift: Decision Training, Calibration, and Implicit Priors
Organizations: Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, The Superior University, Lahore, Pakistan · Independent Researcher
Abstract
Typed decision models (TDMs) return a probability over caller-defined options, and Jev is described by its vendor as calibrated. But in deployment class frequencies change, so calibration measured on a fixed test set need not hold where thresholds are applied. Existing evaluations leave two gaps: the gains of vendor decision training have not been separated from those of the backbone under an identical readout, and TDMs have been tested only at the test set's class distribution. We ask whether decision training improves a model over its own backbone, and whether a TDM's calibration and thresholds withstand prevalence (label) shift as well as a fine-tuned classifier's. We compare three TDMs (Jev, Tev1-4B, Nimble-9B), their base models and two trained classifiers on identical decisions from five public datasets under simulated shift, with 35 paired tests fixed before any test was computed. First, decision training is not uniformly beneficial: Nimble-9B, which differs from Qwen3.5-9B only by a LoRA adapter, is better calibrated on intent tasks but 12.0 Macro-F1 points worse on financial sentiment. Second, under moderate shift Jev's expected calibration error (ECE) and threshold risk grow significantly more than a fine-tuned DeBERTa's only on financial sentiment, by 1.7 and 2.5 percentage points; averaged over 2,000 shift scenarios (exploratory), the gap is at most one point on every dataset. Third, EM prior correction with the model's mean development prediction as its prior needs no labels and lowers Jev's ECE under shift by 2.7 and 1.8 points on the two datasets where it is highest, although labelled recalibration lowers it far more. The three TDMs we tested are neither uniformly better than their backbones nor uniquely fragile under shift; for calibration, their main weakness is the miscalibration they already have without shift. We release all inputs, code and outputs.
Figures & tables
| Study | TDM | Pair | Trained | Shift | Prior | Tests |
| Deußer et al. (2026) | ✓ | – | – | – | – | |
| Rafe & Das (2026) | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | ✓ | |
| Li & Wagle (2026) | ✓ | – | – | – | ||
| Ibrahim & Zaki (2026) | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – |
| Estienne (2023) | – | – | – | – | ✓ | – |
| Lipton et al. (2018) ; Alexandari et al. (2020) ; Garg et al. (2020) | – | – | ✓ | ✓ | – |
| Dataset | Domain | Classes | Candidates | Train | Dev | Test |
| CLINC150 | intent (assistant) | 150 | 18–19 | 14,939 | 2,994 | 4,500 |
| HWU64 | intent (home assistant) | 64 | 21–22 | 7,871 | 1,076 | 1,076 |
| FPB | financial sentiment | 3 | 3 | 3,090 | 775 | 970 |
| HateXplain | hate / offensive speech | 3 | 3 | 15,330 | 1,921 | 1,924 |
| TREC-6 | question type | 6 | 6 | 4,869 | 498 | 500 |
| System | Source | Revision | Precision | Readout |
| Typed decision models | ||||
| Jev | Cloudflare API ( typesafe/jev ) | jev-1.13.0 | API | API probabilities |
| Tev1-4B | togethercomputer/Tev1-4B-experimental | 0b7becf0 | bf16 | letters, Tev1 format |
| Nimble-9B | Qwen3.5-9B + LoRA bespokelabs/Bespoke-Nimble-9B | fe33f82b ( original-2676 ) | 8-bit | letters, Nimble format |
| Base LLMs | ||||
| Qwen3.5-4B | Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B | 851bf6e8 | bf16 | as Tev1-4B |
| CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 | ||||||
| System | F1 | ECE | F1 | ECE | F1 | ECE | F1 | ECE | F1 | ECE |
| Typed decision models | ||||||||||
| Jev | 0.978 | 0.007 | 0.908 | 0.036 | 0.752 | 0.095 | 0.514 | 0.279 | 0.922 | 0.042 |
| Tev1-4B | 0.964 | 0.008 | 0.895 | 0.040 | 0.735 | 0.072 | 0.458 | 0.214 | 0.889 | 0.038 |
| Nimble-9B | 0.962 | 0.008 | 0.896 | 0.035 | 0.629 | 0.263 | 0.470 | 0.336 | 0.872 | 0.043 |
| Base LLMs | ||||||||||
| Test | Prior set | CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 |
| PA1 | frozen (confirmatory) | +0.1 | +0.1 | +1.7 † | 0.8 | +1.0 |
| 5 other sets: range | [0.0, +0.1] | [+0.1, +0.4] | [+0.3, +1.7] | [+0.2, +0.8] | [+0.8, +1.2] | |
| CI excludes 0 | 1/5 | 0/5 | 3/5 | 4/5 | 5/5 | |
| PA2 | frozen (confirmatory) | 0.0 | 0.0 | +2.5 † | 0.6 | +0.5 |
| 5 other sets: range | [0.0, 0.0] | [0.0, +0.2] | [+0.6, +2.3] | [+0.6, +1.5] | [+0.4, +0.6] | |
| CI excludes 0 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 0/5 |
| Test (points) | CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 |
| PA1: ECE under shift, Jev DeBERTa | +0.09 [ 0.02, +0.20] | +0.11 [ 0.30, +0.50] | +1.71 † [+0.98, +2.49] | 0.78 [ 1.29, 0.26] | +1.01 [+0.26, +1.85] |
| PA2: excess risk at , Jev DeBERTa | 0.00 [ 0.04, +0.04] | +0.01 [ 0.21, +0.23] | +2.49 † [+1.83, +3.16] | 0.55 [ 0.98, 0.14] | +0.55 [ 0.06, +1.30] |
| PA3: ECE, Jev EM none | 0.12 [ 0.29, +0.03] | +0.12 [ 0.33, +0.54] | 2.65 † [ 3.74, 1.61] | 1.75 † [ 2.71, 0.82] | 1.06 [ 1.96, 0.28] |
Appendix figures & tables16 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Test | Dataset | (points) | 95% CI | Holm | |
| P1-F1 | CLINC150 | +2.48 | [+1.94, +3.10] | 0.0002 | 0.007 |
| P1-F1 | HWU64 | +2.84 | [+1.10, +4.78] | 0.002 | 0.040 |
| P1-F1 | FPB | +9.99 | [+7.35, +12.69] | 0.0002 | 0.007 |
| P1-F1 | HateXplain | +1.69 | [ 0.16, +3.52] | 0.077 | 1.000 |
| P1-F1 | TREC-6 | +0.65 | [ 2.92, +4.44] | 0.724 | 1.000 |
| P1-ECE | CLINC150 | 0.34 | [ 0.84, +0.21] | 0.255 | 1.000 |
| Dataset | System | Acc | F1 | MCC | ECE | Brier | NLL | AURC | Acc@80 |
| CLINC150 | Jev | 0.978 | 0.978 | 0.978 | 0.007 | 0.032 | 0.152 | 0.004 | 0.997 |
| Tev1-4B | 0.964 | 0.964 | 0.963 | 0.008 | 0.055 | 0.130 | 0.003 | 0.997 | |
| Nimble-9B | 0.962 | 0.962 | 0.961 | 0.008 | 0.060 | 0.140 | 0.004 | 0.996 | |
| Nimble-9B (main) ∗ | 0.969 | 0.969 | 0.968 | 0.010 | 0.050 | 0.123 | 0.002 | 0.997 | |
| Qwen3.5-4B | 0.939 | 0.939 | 0.939 | 0.011 | 0.089 | 0.233 | 0.007 | 0.994 | |
| Qwen3.5-9B | 0.955 | 0.955 | 0.955 | 0.020 | 0.067 | 0.176 | 0.005 | 0.995 |
| Dataset | seed 1001 | 1002 | 1003 | 1004 | 1005 | mean SD |
| CLINC150 | 0.980 | 0.981 | 0.983 | 0.982 | 0.981 | 0.981 0.001 |
| HWU64 | 0.939 | 0.943 | 0.954 | 0.943 | 0.942 | 0.944 0.006 |
| FPB | 0.870 | 0.854 | 0.857 | 0.865 | 0.868 | 0.863 0.007 |
| HateXplain | 0.703 | 0.700 | 0.700 | 0.711 | 0.700 | 0.703 0.005 |
| TREC-6 | 0.971 | 0.978 | 0.974 | 0.971 | 0.959 | 0.971 0.007 |
| Dataset | same prediction | same prob. vector | max | accuracy (3 repeats) | ECE range (4 runs) | |
| CLINC150 | 500 | 99.8% | 87.4% | 0.12 | 0.972 / 0.970 / 0.972 | 0.012–0.015 |
| HWU64 | 500 | 99.6% | 72.2% | 0.20 | 0.918 / 0.920 / 0.916 | 0.039–0.049 |
| FPB | 500 | 97.6% | 27.4% | 0.16 | 0.738 / 0.738 / 0.736 | 0.110–0.116 |
| HateXplain | 500 | 96.4% | 19.4% | 0.29 | 0.538 / 0.532 / 0.532 | 0.271–0.282 |
| TREC-6 | 500 | 98.2% | 63.8% | 0.15 | 0.926 / 0.928 / 0.926 | 0.030–0.042 |
| CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 | ||||||
| System | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 |
| Jev | +0.1 | +0.5 | +0.2 | +1.5 | +0.2 | +0.8 | 1.0 | +2.5 | +1.4 | +2.4 |
| Tev1-4B | +0.1 | +0.9 | +0.3 | +1.9 | +1.1 | +4.8 | 0.8 | +2.0 | +1.9 | +4.4 |
| Nimble-9B | +0.1 | +1.0 | +0.4 | +2.0 | +0.5 | +1.0 | 1.2 | +2.5 | +0.8 | +2.6 |
| Qwen3.5-4B | +0.3 | +1.3 | +0.3 | +1.7 | +0.8 | +3.9 | 0.9 | +3.7 | +0.8 | +2.7 |
| Qwen3.5-9B | +0.1 | +0.4 | +0.1 | +0.8 | +0.2 | +0.3 | 1.0 | +1.9 | +0.2 | +1.2 |
| Dataset | System | none | temp. | EM | BCTS+EM | oracle |
| CLINC150 | Jev | 0.009 | 0.010 | 0.008 | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Tev1-4B | 0.011 | 0.010 | 0.011 | 0.010 | 0.010 | |
| Nimble-9B | 0.011 | 0.009 | 0.012 | 0.017 | 0.010 | |
| Qwen3.5-4B | 0.016 | 0.015 | 0.015 | 0.014 | 0.012 | |
| Qwen3.5-9B | 0.022 | 0.011 | 0.020 | 0.014 | 0.017 | |
| DeBERTa-v3-large | 0.014 | 0.008 | 0.013 | 0.012 | 0.012 |
| Quantity (points) | CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 |
| PA1 ( ECE, Jev DeBERTa): 50 fixed priors | +0.1 | +0.1 | +1.7 | 0.8 | +1.0 |
| 200 descriptive draws | 0.0 | +0.1 | +0.2 | 0.8 | +1.0 |
| PA2 (excess risk, Jev DeBERTa): 50 fixed priors | 0.0 | 0.0 | +2.5 | 0.6 | +0.5 |
| 200 descriptive draws | 0.0 | 0.0 | +0.4 | 0.7 | +0.4 |
| PA3 (ECE, Jev EM none): 50 fixed priors | 0.1 | +0.1 | 2.7 | 1.8 | 1.1 |
| 200 descriptive draws | 0.1 | 0.0 | 1.8 | 1.7 | 1.1 |
| Test | Estimate | CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 |
| PA1 | frozen 50 priors | +0.1 | +0.1 | +1.7 † | 0.8 | +1.0 |
| 2,000 priors: mean (SE) | 0.0 (0.0) | +0.1 (0.0) | +0.4 (0.1) | 0.0 (0.2) | +1.0 (0.0) | |
| SD across priors | 0.4 | 1.4 | 5.4 | 7.4 | 1.7 | |
| PA2 | frozen 50 priors | 0.0 | 0.0 | +2.5 † | 0.6 | +0.5 |
| 2,000 priors: mean (SE) | 0.0 (0.0) | 0.0 (0.0) | +0.5 (0.2) | +0.4 (0.2) | +0.5 (0.0) | |
| SD across priors | 0.2 | 0.9 | 7.6 | 9.8 | 1.3 |
| System | CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 |
| Jev | 0.0 / 0.3 / 0.6 | 0.0 / 1.3 / 2.3 | +0.4 / 9.6 / 12.4 | 0.9 / 19.5 / 21.8 | +0.7 / 2.8 / 4.1 |
| Tev1-4B | 0.0 / 0.3 / 0.6 | 0.1 / 1.7 / 2.9 | +1.0 / 17.1 / 21.3 | 0.6 / 12.1 / 16.1 | +0.9 / 5.3 / 7.9 |
| Nimble-9B | 0.0 / 0.2 / 0.7 | +0.1 / 2.4 / 5.6 | +2.3 / 28.4 / 33.0 | 1.1 / 17.4 / 20.2 | 0.0 / 2.9 / 4.9 |
| Qwen3.5-4B | 0.0 / 0.3 / 0.7 | 0.0 / 2.0 / 4.8 | +2.1 / 27.3 / 34.7 | 1.0 / 17.2 / 19.2 | +0.4 / 3.2 / 4.8 |
| Qwen3.5-9B | 0.0 / 0.3 / 0.5 | +0.1 / 2.3 / 4.4 | +0.5 / 9.3 / 11.2 | 1.0 / 15.7 / 17.6 | 0.0 / 2.6 / 3.7 |
| DeBERTa-v3-large | 0.0 / 0.2 / 0.4 | 0.1 / 0.9 / 2.1 | 0.0 / 3.4 / 5.9 | 0.2 / 10.2 / 12.6 | +0.3 / 2.1 / 3.8 |
| CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 | ||||||
| System | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 |
| Jev | 0.0 | +0.1 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 0.0 | +0.3 | 2.0 | +3.7 | +1.7 | +1.9 |
| Tev1-4B | 0.1 | +0.1 | 0.1 | 0.6 | +0.2 | +0.3 | 1.1 | +2.0 | +1.0 | +1.7 |
| Nimble-9B | 0.0 | +0.1 | 0.1 | 0.7 | +0.9 | +0.9 | 2.1 | +3.9 | 1.0 | 0.6 |
| Qwen3.5-4B | 0.1 | +0.1 | 0.1 | 0.4 | +0.9 | +1.1 | 1.7 | +3.2 | +0.5 | +0.8 |
| Qwen3.5-9B | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0.6 | +0.2 | +0.2 | 1.9 | +3.6 | 0.4 | 0.0 |
| CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 | ||||||
| System | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 | =1 | 0.1 |
| Jev | 0.1 | 0.0 | 2.8 | 7.3 | 0.2 | +0.7 | 10.8 | +19.7 | +3.7 | +5.3 |
| Tev1-4B | 0.2 | +0.4 | 0.6 | 1.7 | +0.3 | +0.5 | 2.5 | +4.8 | +3.8 | +5.0 |
| Nimble-9B | 0.1 | +0.1 | 0.7 | 2.1 | +1.5 | +1.4 | 5.1 | +8.9 | 0.5 | 0.1 |
| Qwen3.5-4B | 0.2 | +0.4 | 0.2 | 1.1 | +1.4 | +2.0 | 3.4 | +6.6 | +1.4 | +1.8 |
| Qwen3.5-9B | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.4 | 1.8 | +0.3 | +0.7 | 4.6 | +8.7 | 0.3 | +0.8 |
| CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 | ||||||
| System | no shift | =1 | no shift | =1 | no shift | =1 | no shift | =1 | no shift | =1 |
| Jev | 0.0 | 0.1 | +0.6 | 0.0 | +0.1 | 1.8 | +0.4 | 1.7 | 0.2 | 1.1 |
| Tev1-4B | +0.1 | 0.0 | +0.5 | +0.1 | +0.1 | 0.9 | +0.3 | 4.6 | +0.4 | 0.0 |
| Nimble-9B | +0.2 | +0.1 | +0.5 | +0.3 | 0.0 | 2.8 | 0.2 | 1.9 | 0.6 | 0.6 |
| Qwen3.5-4B | +0.1 | 0.1 | +0.4 | 0.1 | 1.5 | 3.1 | +0.4 | 3.6 | 0.3 | 0.7 |
| Qwen3.5-9B | +0.1 | 0.2 | +0.4 | 0.2 | +0.3 | 2.0 | +0.1 | 1.6 | 0.3 | 0.6 |
| Qwen3.5-9B predicted | Nimble-9B predicted | |||||
| Gold | negative | neutral | positive | negative | neutral | positive |
| negative (125) | 111 | 12 | 2 | 119 | 3 | 3 |
| neutral (565) | 42 | 364 | 159 | 78 | 202 | 285 |
| positive (280) | 7 | 27 | 246 | 7 | 4 | 269 |
| Total predicted | 160 | 403 | 407 | 204 | 209 | 557 |
| System | CLINC150 | HWU64 | FPB | HateXplain | TREC-6 |
| Jev | 0.014 | 0.052 | 0.184 | 0.232 | 0.060 |
| Tev1-4B | 0.020 | 0.068 | 0.230 | 0.233 | 0.115 |
| Nimble-9B | 0.024 | 0.068 | 0.368 | 0.268 | 0.043 |
| Qwen3.5-4B | 0.033 | 0.084 | 0.381 | 0.238 | 0.052 |
| Qwen3.5-9B | 0.023 | 0.080 | 0.169 | 0.229 | 0.029 |
| System | F1 (all 1076) | F1 (non-overlap 462) | ECE (all) | ECE (non-overlap) |
| Jev | 0.908 | 0.883 | 0.036 | 0.047 |
| Tev1-4B | 0.895 | 0.872 | 0.040 | 0.046 |
| Nimble-9B | 0.896 | 0.860 | 0.035 | 0.042 |
| Qwen3.5-4B | 0.866 | 0.842 | 0.058 | 0.056 |
| Qwen3.5-9B | 0.884 | 0.857 | 0.078 | 0.085 |
| DeBERTa-v3-large | 0.939 | 0.904 | 0.030 | 0.027 |
| Item | Status | Where |
| B1 label-probability baseline from an ordinary LM | yes | Qwen3.5-4B/9B with the same prompts and letter readout ( Section 4 ) |
| B2 cheap generative cascade | not applicable | we study single models, not cascades |
| B3 trained task-specific classifier | yes | DeBERTa-v3-large and TF-IDF + LR on full training data |
| T1 model spread; no parity claims on saturated tests | yes | Table 4 ; no equivalence claims |
| T2 agreement across repeats | yes, for Jev | Table 10 ; local models repeated identically in a 50-example check |
| T3 option-name invariance | partly | fixed candidate order and label texts for all systems; no renaming study |
Language Model Calibration
Language model calibration studies whether models’ confidence estimates match their actual accuracy across tasks, prompts, and deployment settings.
See all 383 papers