trade-evaluation

Trade Evaluation: Two-Sided Assessment

Judge a specific trade from both rosters' perspectives. Raw player value is the start, not the verdict — value only counts when it reaches a starting lineup.

Step 1: Load context

Read leagues.md from the project root first — the fields that matter here are scoring, starting slots, roster/bench size, playoff weeks, trade deadline, and whether trades face a veto vote. If the file is missing or blank, ask and suggest running fantasy-league-setup:league-config. If more than one league is defined, use the one marked (default).

Gather both full rosters, both records/standings, and the exact terms. Without the other team's roster only half an evaluation is possible — say so and evaluate provisionally.

For any in-season evaluation, make the timing explicit:

• State the verdict as of a concrete date/time.
• Refresh injuries, suspensions, depth-chart changes, and any same-week news if the inputs are stale or undated. Trade advice that turns on a Tuesday hamstring report should not be delivered as if it were timeless.
• For any consequential injury-based value swing, require both the official team/game status and a second credible source. One unsupported report is not enough to move a player multiple tiers.

Step 2: Who originated the offer? — ask this first

An incoming offer is adversely selected. The proposer built it after looking at both rosters and concluded it helps them. That is not bad faith; it is what proposing means. It does change the prior:

• Offers you received: require a clearly positive edge, not merely an even one. "Even" plus adverse selection is a small loss on average.
• Offers you constructed: even is genuinely fine, and mutual benefit is the normal shape of a good trade.

This is the step most trade advice skips, and it flips the verdict on marginal incoming offers.

Step 3: Raw value pass

Assign each player a rest-of-season value from projections the user supplies, a consensus source read from the browser (name it and the date), or reasoned judgment (label it as such). Sum both sides. Live platform source routing. Honor a browser the user explicitly names. If leagues.md records a Preferred browser, use that when it has a signed-in session for the platform. Otherwise use any authenticated browser the current assistant already has. For Yahoo league data, prefer an authenticated browser over a connector. If a Yahoo connector returns 403, unauthorized, or an equivalent authorization failure, do not retry it during the same task. For non-Yahoo platforms, use a purpose-built connector when it is available and returns complete current data; otherwise use the browser. Read league rosters, the free-agent pool, standings, transaction history, and any rankings site directly instead of making the user paste them. Timestamp live data and name the source. The session rules from roster-ops apply unchanged: the user's session is the auth; never ask for, read, store, or type credentials; use the visible UI rather than platform endpoints; and stop and hand back on any login, 2FA, captcha, consent, or unusual-activity screen. If no usable live source exists, state the access gap and do not fabricate league-specific analysis.