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Every ranked asset carries a confidence label and a confidence_details object. The label is a summary; the details are what you should actually build logic against.

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The fields

sample_std_dev is the most directly useful of these. It tells you how much the pipeline disagreed with itself on the same asset. A score whose repetitions ranged widely is a soft score regardless of where it landed in the ordering.

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The 0.30 rule

Kettio treats any gap smaller than 0.30 as a close pair. That is the threshold at which close-pair refinement is willing to run a pairwise panel, and it is a reasonable line for your own logic too.
A gap under 0.30 is not a ranking. Presenting rank 1 as the winner when it beat rank 2 by 0.08 is presenting noise as a decision. Either escalate the pair to /api/v1/pairwise or surface both as jointly leading.

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When refinement already ran

If you left refine_close_pairs at its default, Kettio has already done some of this for you. It finds close pairs, sorts them by how close they are, and refines at most 6 pairs per request. Check these fields before deciding whether you still need to escalate: A panel_outcome showing a flip is informative: the SSR ordering and the pairwise panel disagreed, and the panel won. A pair that was close but sat outside the top 6 was never refined at all — the gap is still soft even though nothing in the response flags it.

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A usable decision rule

1

Reject the batch if assets failed

summary.assets_failed > 0 means the ordering is incomplete.
2

Compare the top gap against 0.30

Above it, treat rank 1 as leading. Below it, treat the top assets as tied.
3

Sanity-check the spread

If sample_std_dev on either asset is large relative to the gap, the gap is inside the noise even if it clears 0.30.
4

Escalate ties rather than breaking them

Send the pair to the Pairwise API, or report both and let a human choose.
The failure mode to design against is false precision. A ranking API will always return an order — including when the assets are indistinguishable. The confidence fields exist so your interface can say “these two are tied” instead of inventing a winner.