AIRS-J/1 · Changelog

Every version of the Standard, and what changed

Version files are additive: no released version is overwritten, and each keeps its permalink. Where reliability, fairness or validity monitoring shows a claim needs strengthening, AIR APAC acts on it in the next release, and the validation report records what changed (section 4.8). Each Review Board member's dissent from a released version is recorded here. None has been recorded so far.

What changed from v2.2

Three guidance notes on deciding under uncertainty.

Version 2.3 adds three short guidance notes. It is a compatible refinement (section 19.2).

The first is under dimension P1. Deciding now on the part of a decision that is urgent or can be reversed, and choosing to wait on a named part until a stated date or condition, is a commitment. It is scored on the P1 anchors like any other commitment (section 7.5).

The second is under dimension S2. Where a situation has several issues, ranking them by their effect on the decision and working first on the few that matter most is Level 3 behaviour. Working through every issue with equal effort is not (section 7.5).

The third is in section 2.1. Training aligned to the Standard may teach how to work with an AI assistant: how to brief it, question it and ask for what it left out. An instrument may record those conversations as evidence for S1, T1 and T2. The quality of the prompt itself is not scored.

Nothing changes in the nine dimensions, the anchors, the evidence requirements, the thresholds, the bands or the decision rules. A credential issued under an earlier version stays valid to its expiry.

Section 7.5 of v2.3 →

What changed from v2.1

A new way to pay for an Assessment, and certification of facilitators.

Version 2.2 adds a sponsored route. An employer, or another organisation, may pay for a person's Assessment without commissioning it. That organisation is a sponsor (section 3).

A sponsored candidate sits as an independent candidate. The result goes to the candidate, and to another party only if the candidate names that party. The sponsor receives no result by name and no team view. Once ten or more of its sponsored candidates have sat, the sponsor may receive the number of credentials issued, and nothing else. A further number needs ten or more further candidates. Whether a sitting is sponsored or commissioned is set before the candidate starts, and sponsored candidates are told what the number can show (sections 12.6 and 12.7).

A sponsor agrees not to require or reward the release of a result, not to treat a choice not to release one as adverse, and not to withhold or claim the credential (sections 12.11 and 14.4). Fairness monitoring reports sponsored certification as a use of its own (section 15.2).

An organisation that wants named results for development, assessment, promotion or hiring commissions the Assessment, as before, and its candidates are told before they start (section 12.6).

Version 2.2 also brings facilitator certification under the Standard. AIR APAC certifies the trainers who complete the StepSim facilitator programme, after one session with a real group that an observer authorised by AIR APAC watches. Exeter Labs builds the software and licenses certified facilitators to run it, and certifies no one. A facilitator certification is not a judgment credential: it carries no level or band, and it does not let the holder assess anyone (sections 4.9 and 20.6).

Nothing changes in the nine dimensions, the anchors, the evidence requirements, the thresholds, the bands or the decision rules. A credential issued under an earlier version stays valid to its expiry (section 18.3).

Section 12.6 of v2.3 →

Version history

Section 19, verbatim.

19.1 Owner. AIR APAC Pte. Ltd. is the issuing body and owns this document. The owner of AIR APAC approves every version; the review board reviews every major version before release (Section 4.2).

19.2 Versioning. Compatible refinements (clarifications, errata, added guidance, added annex material) are released as v2.x. Material changes to the competency model, the anchors, the evidence requirements or the decision rules are released as v3.0. Each released version keeps a permanent URL and is never overwritten; the entry below records what changed and why.

19.3 Corrections and feedback. Anyone may submit a correction, an objection to a requirement, or evidence that contradicts a claim made here, through the contact route published at airapac.org/standard. Submissions are logged. A submission that identifies a defect in a normative requirement is put to the review board, and the outcome is recorded with the next version. Adverse findings are published under Section 4.8.

19.4 History.

Version Date Change
0.1 Draft Initial draft. Nine dimensions proposed. One anchor set written. Not issued.
0.2 2026-08-15 Reconciled with canonical StepSim scenario methodology. Added E1 Decision Rights and Escalation; merged stakeholder alignment and disclosure into E2; folded proportionality into P1. Added stakes profile and coverage requirement (§6). All nine anchor sets written. Level 4 rewritten to remove positional-authority confound. Added non-claims (§2.1), assessment integrity (§9), reliability and standard setting (§11), fairness monitoring (§15), candidate data rights (§14.5 to 14.7). Corrected Merit/Distinction band ordering. Not issued.
0.3 2026-08-15 External-scrutiny revision. Clarified certified function and managerial scope; removed premature instrument approval; added access-support rules, assessor authorisation, explicit provisional aggregation, critical-review reassessment, confidence precedence, performance-appropriate standard-setting requirements, pilot discriminant gating, expanded fairness analysis, appeals and complaints. Expanded the v1.0 evidence gates. The nine dimensions and anchors are unchanged. Not issued.
1.0 2026-08-19 Initial Edition. Published as the authoritative specification. No change to the competency model, anchors, evidence requirements, decision rules or non-claims: v1.0 is v0.3 text with the publication decision made and the gating vocabulary corrected. The requirements that were written as gates on "v1.0 issue" are gates on opening certification, and are restated as such throughout, including Annex A. Added the status-of-this-edition note, the owner, versioning and corrections provisions (§19.1 to §19.3), and an effective date.
1.0-E1 2026-08-23 Erratum to v1.0, issued under the interim-errata provision in the header. Annex B.1 stated that every dimension maps to exactly one lifecycle code and that no dimension spans two. That contradicted the table it introduced, in which T3, E2 and P1 each span two, and it located duplicate prevention in the mapping rather than in the evidence. The statement is withdrawn and replaced: the crosswalk is many-to-many, the three spanning dimensions are marked in the table, and duplicate prevention is restated as the evidence-level rule that no single piece of participant evidence may be scored under more than one dimension. No normative change. No dimension definition, anchor, threshold, evidence requirement, decision rule or non-claim is altered.
1.1 2026-10-01 Compatible refinement under §19.2, issued without the review board because §4.2 requires the board only before a major version. StepSim is no longer named as a candidate instrument (§16.3, A12); instrument neutrality is unchanged. Added §4.9, the issuing body's declared interests. Annex B.1 and B.2 no longer route to StepSim's methodology: the lifecycle is AIR APAC's scenario-authoring checklist, and Section 6 is the canonical stakes-profile definition. No normative change to any dimension, anchor, threshold, evidence requirement, decision rule, non-claim or Annex A gate.
2.0 2026-10-03 Major version, approved by the owner of AIR APAC and by the review board drawn from AIR APAC's councils (§4.2, §17) on 2026-10-03; no dissent recorded. AIRS-J/1 becomes an operating certification and AIR APAC the judgment authority. StepSim is the official instrument (§8.1, §16.3, Annex F). Non-claims (§2.1) become claims with named bases; the validation programme (§11.7) is added, including synthetic-candidate evidence, prediction (V6) and fairness (V7). Rule-based instrument scoring generates observations directly; model-generated scores still never stand alone (§11.4). A response bank of authored lines with decoys is a response format, not prompting (§7.1.2). C4 includes wrong or misused records about identifiable people (§6.1). Several scenarios in one sitting are not clustering for confidence (§10). Results go by name to the commissioning organisation, with candidates told before they start (§12.6). The review board is drawn from AIR APAC's standing councils, with the owner's veto (§4.2, §17). Retention follows need (§14.6). Annex A becomes the evidence programme and no longer blocks certification. High confidence no longer needs two instrument types (§10). Unchanged: the nine dimensions, the anchors, the 0 to 4 scale, the stakes profile and coverage rule, the minimum observations, the thresholds and the bands.
2.1 2026-10-15 Compatible refinement under §19.2, approved by the owner of AIR APAC; the review board told (§4.2). Aligning the Standard to three uses on one rubric: development (training), readiness (Campus) and assessment for employment (§2). Title becomes "Standard for Judgment in AI-Enabled Work"; designation and the meaning of "managerial" (§2.2) unchanged. "Predictive of job performance" rests on a new criterion check on real people, V8, by role family; V6 supports it and is not its basis alone (§2.1, §11.7), as the owner approved on 4 October 2026. Employment-grade results defined (§12.8); applicants distinguished from employees (§12.6), with a notice (§12.9), a job-relevance statement (§12.10), an adverse-impact check (§15.7) and appeal (§18.5). The owner takes no part in any individual result (§4.3). Campus covers final-year students and recent graduates on entry-level workplace scenarios, with rules for institutions (§13, §13.4). Role editions (§13.3). Team view floor of ten (§12.7). Training aligned to the Standard (§20). Facilitator certification declared in §4.9. Evidence programme items A19 to A21. Who receives what changes: an applicant's Provisional or Insufficient result no longer reaches the employer (v2.0 §12.6 sent every commissioned result by name), and an employment-grade result that one observation would flip gains one further mission before release (§12.8.1), by the evidence-adding route already in §12.2.2. New obligations on AIR APAC and on users of results; no change to the competency model (§5), the anchors (§7), the minimum observations (§8.3), or the certification thresholds, bands and decision rules (§§12.1 to 12.5).
2.2 2026-10-18 Compatible refinement under §19.2, approved by the owner of AIR APAC on 2026-10-18; the review board told (§4.2). Defines a sponsor and the sponsored candidate (§3, §12.6, §12.7): an organisation may pay for a person's Assessment without commissioning it. The person sits as an independent candidate and decides who sees the result. The sponsor receives no result by name and no team view, only the number of credentials issued once ten or more of its sponsored candidates have sat. With it: "commissioning organisation" is defined (§3); a further number needs ten or more further candidates, the route is set before the candidate starts, and sponsored candidates are told what the number can show (§12.6); sponsorship terms (§12.11); fairness monitoring reports sponsored certification as a use (§15.2). On the owner's ruling of 18 October 2026, AIR APAC certifies both trainers and participants: facilitator certification is issued by AIR APAC, not Exeter Labs, and Exeter Labs builds the software and issues no certification (§4.9, §20.5). Facilitator certification becomes a certification under this Standard, with its requirements, observed capstone, decision, register entry, validity, withdrawal and appeal (§2, §3, §20.6); it is not a judgment credential. Who receives what changes, as in v2.1; no change to the competency model (§5), the anchors (§7), the evidence requirements (§8.3), or the certification thresholds, bands and decision rules (§§12.1 to 12.5).
2.3 2026-10-19 Compatible refinement under §19.2 (added guidance), approved by the owner of AIR APAC on 2026-10-19; the review board told (§4.2). Three guidance notes on deciding under uncertainty, in answer to the owner's question of 19 October 2026 whether the Standard covers managerial decisions in volatile and uncertain conditions. A note under P1: a staged commitment (deciding now on the urgent or reversible part and postponing a named part to a stated date or condition) is a commitment, scored on the existing anchors; postponing with nothing named stays Level 0. A note under S2: ranking several issues by their effect on the decision and working first on the few that drive most of the consequence is Level 3 behaviour. A note under §2: aligned training may teach working with an AI assistant, and an instrument may record those conversations as S1, T1 and T2 evidence; prompt quality is still not scored. Before release, the official instrument was checked: at least one Practice mission and one Assessment mission let a candidate stage a commitment and present more issues than can all be worked. No change to the competency model (§5), the anchors (§7), the evidence requirements (§8.3), or the certification thresholds, bands and decision rules (§§12.1 to 12.5).

20. Training aligned to the Standard§

Training is the development use of this Standard (Section 2). This section says what a training programme may claim, and how AIR APAC certifies the facilitators who run sessions on the official instrument (Section 20.6). It does not set what a programme teaches or how it is delivered.

20.1 "Aligned to AIRS-J/1". A programme, including one delivered by a licensed trainer or a delivery partner, may describe itself as aligned to AIRS-J/1 only where:

  • each learning outcome names the dimension or dimensions it develops, in the words of Section 5;
  • its practice scenarios meet the eligibility rule in Section 6.3, and together cover at least two consequence families, one of them C1, C4, C5b or C6;
  • feedback to participants refers to the anchors in Section 7.5, and no criterion of the trainer's own is presented as part of the Standard (Section 4.5);
  • it uses no held-back Assessment content and no leaked content (Sections 9.3, 9.5).

A programme states its outcome map on its course page or in its funding application. AIR APAC may ask for it, lists aligned programmes on request, and removes a listing where this section is not met. A programme that does not meet this section may say it is informed by AIRS-J/1 and makes no alignment claim. Alignment is not an accreditation by any funding body and does not by itself qualify a programme for funding.

20.2 Completion records. A record of completion states what the person attended and practised: participant, programme, date and hours, the dimensions practised, the number of scenarios played and their consequence families, the sentence 'This is not an AIRS-J/1 credential', and where to book an Assessment. It carries no level, band or confidence, is not an AIRS-J/1 credential, and confers nothing toward certification. A trainer may issue the attendance or completion document a funding body requires, provided it does not present the AIRS-J/1 designation as a credential, level or band and does not imply certification. A trainer may tell participants that certification is open to them and where to book it, and may not say or imply that attendance raises the chance of certifying, that a participant is ready, or that a result is assured (Section 4.4). Certification needs a separate Assessment on held-back scenarios (Sections 8.4, 9.3).

20.3 Development readings. A reading from practice or a training session shows the person's decisions and how the published rules read them, labelled as a development reading. Levels per dimension and bands come only from an Assessment. Who sees it is stated to participants before they start. It decides nothing about a person's employment or certification (Section 12.8).

20.4 Progress claims. A programme may claim that participants' judgment improved only on this basis: before and after the programme, each participant plays unseen parallel practice scenarios of the same track and comparable stakes coverage. The claim is made for a group of at least ten participants, never for a named person. It states the number of participants, the scenarios, and the share of decision points at which the published anchors read the participants' acts higher after than before, by dimension where the scenario elicits it. It gives no level, band or confidence, because those come only from an Assessment (Section 20.3). Improvement on a scenario the person has already played is practice, not progress. A claim of improved judgment is not a claim of readiness for certification.

20.5 Trainers. A trainer who delivers an aligned programme need not hold an AIRS-J/1 certification. A trainer who runs sessions on the official instrument holds a facilitator certification (Section 20.6). A trainer who scores or confirms an observation for certification acts as an assessor under Sections 4.6 and 11.6. Section 4.4 applies to every trainer.

20.6 Facilitator certification. AIR APAC certifies facilitators under this Standard. The certification states that the holder can run sessions on the official instrument in a programme aligned to this Standard, to the rules of this Section 20. It is not a judgment credential: it carries no level, band or confidence, is not convertible to or from a certification under Section 12, and does not authorise the holder to assess (Section 11.6).

  • Requirements. The candidate completes the StepSim facilitator programme delivered by AIR Academy (Section 4.9), then runs one capstone session with a real group, observed by a person AIR APAC authorises for the purpose.
  • What the observer records. Whether the candidate: ran the mission on the official instrument as specified; told participants before they started who sees their readings (Section 20.3); gave readings only as development readings and named no person's shortfall in front of the group; made no claim barred by Sections 4.4 and 20.2; and issued completion records that meet Section 20.2.
  • Decision. AIR APAC decides Certified or Not Yet Certified on the observer's record, with written reasons. A candidate not yet certified may run a further observed capstone session.
  • Register and validity. A facilitator certification is recorded in the register as a facilitator certification, distinct from every judgment credential (Section 14.1). It is valid for two years from issue and is renewed by a further observed session against the then-current version.
  • Withdrawal and appeal. Besides the grounds in Section 18.4, AIR APAC may suspend or revoke a facilitator certification where the holder breaches Section 4.4, 4.6 or 20.2, by the process in Section 18.4. Section 18.5 applies to the decision and to any suspension.
  • Licence. The licence to run the official instrument is issued by Exeter Labs and is not a certification. A facilitator certification is a condition of the licence; the licence is not a condition of the certification.
Current: v2.3 · in forceSite rendering: airs-j-1-v2-3.md · SHA-256 bc78755573bd…

The copy this site renders is synced from the canonical source in the AIR APAC standards programme and checksum-gated at build time; the site cannot publish a version of the Standard the standards folder does not hold. Version 0.3 supersedes 0.1 and 0.2, which remain historically recorded above but are not rendered as standalone documents on this site. Each released version from 1.0 onward is rendered unchanged at its own permalink:

Before release

Changes to v2.0 after its approval.

4 October 2026, approved by the owner of AIR APAC before release: validation check V7 adds market and job level to its matched pairs. Matched candidates who differ only in market, or only in job level, must also reach the same levels, as they must for gender, age, nationality and first language. No dimension, anchor, threshold or decision rule changes.

Section 11.7 of v2.3 →

Findings

Findings that changed the Standard.

None recorded yet under version 2.0. When the validation programme (section 11.7) or fairness monitoring (section 15) shows a claim needs strengthening, the change and the finding behind it are recorded here and in the validation report.

Governance and section 4.8 →