I suggest four questions for assessing the gravity of verbal manipulations:

Did the leader with nuclear launch authority make or associate themselves with the statement?
Is there a clear demand made of adversary targets?
Do the losses experienced by the state in question meet criteria for nuclear use as defined by its doctrine or leaders?
Is imminent action necessary to relieve the perceived threat to the state/leader, and/or to preempt an adversary from initiating nuclear use against the state or its allies?

The more specifically that the answers to these questions are ‘yes’, the graver the verbal manipulations should be judged. Because available information and/or the reality of a situation is unlikely to allow binary ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, colour-coding could convey assessors’ assessments. A scale of shading represents from white (unquestioned ‘no’) to a yellow-to-red spectrum, with dark red representing the most dangerous assessment. Gray can represent lack of adequate information on which to make an assessment.

I suggest five questions for assessing the gravity of physical manipulations:

Is the manipulation secret (unannounced)?
Is it exceptionally difficult for advanced technologies to detect?
Is the action rare?
Does it involve nuclear weapons?
Is it more consistent with nuclear attack than with ensuring survivability of forces and personnel?

If the answers to these questions are ‘yes’, the manipulation would be assessed as very grave.