How an agent catalog uses an Agent SoW

A catalog is where agents are discovered, and a statement of work is where terms are agreed. One rule connects them: for anything with a price, the listing is generated from the contract. The contract is the source of truth, and the listing is a shorter view of it in product language.

The contract is written first

The natural instinct is to write the marketing first and the contract for each deal. For priced offerings this specification requires the reverse (section 12 of the specification). The provider writes and signs a standing proposal SoW once for each offering, with every clause complete and the counterparty blank. The catalog listing is derived from it. The buyer who clicks through is countersigning the very document the listing came from. That countersign is a request to form, and the deal exists only when the provider's runtime signs the completed instance. The runtime may instead refuse, by naming a qualification the buyer did not meet.

From signed terms to a purchasesections 12.1 and 6.1
standing proposal SoW   signed by the seller, counterparty blank
        │
        │  projection: structured claims pulled, prose written around them
        ▼
catalog listing         price, inputs, deliverables, volume, term: quoted
        │
        │  search: the scope clause's in-scope examples are the queries
        ▼
buyer reads the listing and can fetch the full document it was made from
        │
        │  countersign: the buyer's seat and starts_at fill in, the buyer signs
        ▼
request to form         one signature, so it has no force
        │
        │  the provider's runtime checks the qualifications the offer states
        │  and refuses, by name, any the buyer does not meet; where the offer
        │  says formation needs a person, it waits for the buyer's human
        ▼
agreed                  the provider signs the completed instance; two
                        signatures over the same bytes
        │
        │  starts_at arrives
        ▼
active                  both runtimes enforce it
The two cannot drift apart. The listing and the agreement are projections of the same signed bytes, so what was advertised and what was agreed cannot diverge. And one signature makes no deal: until the provider signs the completed instance, the buyer holds a request.

What this prevents

Every marketplace eventually has the same fight. The listing said one thing, the delivered work was another, and nobody can produce the version of the promise that was live at the time of purchase. Deriving listings from standing proposals removes the raw material for that fight.

  • Structured claims come from clauses. Price, inputs, deliverables, scope, volume, term length and dispute posture are all quoted from the standing proposal. A claim with no clause behind it cannot appear.
  • The listing names its source. It carries the identifier and version of the standing proposal it was derived from, so anyone can fetch the full document the listing summarizes.
  • Prose translates the clauses into product language. The description is written by a person and reads like one, and it may not introduce a claim that no clause backs.
  • Search text comes from the scope clause. The example queries that make the offering findable are the scope clause's in-scope examples, so the query that found the agent is text the engagement covers.
  • Conditions are published in advance. An offer may state qualifications a buyer has to meet before its countersign is accepted, such as account standing, a capability or a passed validation probe. They sit in the signed document, where a buyer reads them before spending anything. "Countersign requires a passed probe" is a checkable condition because a probe leaves a signed outcome behind (section 13 of the specification).
  • A refusal has to be recorded. The provider's runtime must complete formation for a buyer who meets the stated qualifications, and when it refuses it must name the one that was not met. Refusing for a reason the document never stated is itself an event the runtime has to record. A published offer that is silently vetoed on unstated grounds is not a standing offer, and the reputation systems that read these records treat it accordingly.

What the shopper sees

A listing reads like a product page, and its facts are labeled as what they are: quoted clauses. Next to the friendly description sit the pulled terms: the price, what you must provide, what you get back, how much you may send, how long the deal runs and what happens when something fails, each carrying its grade. One link fetches the full standing proposal. The shopper never has to wonder whether the fine print differs from the listing, because the listing was generated from the fine print.

What "the price" means depends on which arrangement the standing proposal declares. A fixed-fee offer lists a rate per task. A time and materials offer lists a rate schedule, one line for each metered unit the provider bills, and the listing must also show the not-to-exceed cap. That is a rule: a rate shown without its cap misrepresents the offer, because the cap is the only number that tells a buyer what the engagement can cost. A no-charge offer says so in those words, and a listing must not show it as an absent price or as a price of zero. The pricing arrangements are in section 5.5 of the specification.

What the provider maintains

There is one document for each offering. When the standing proposal is updated, the listing is generated again. Running engagements are untouched, because each one is pinned to the version both owners countersigned, and renewals pick up the new terms through the normal amendment path. There is no separate listing copy to keep in sync, and no marketing page quietly promising things the people who wrote the terms never saw.

Informal listings are exempt from all of this. An agent that answers questions for nothing, with no way to engage it from the listing, can be listed from its own manifest, with no contract required. The requirement binds where money or commitments appear. A free offering that a shopper can engage is a commitment even though no money moves, so it comes from a standing proposal like any other, declaring the no-charge arrangement.

An offer to one named buyer gets no listing at all. A provider may sign a standing proposal that names the single party entitled to countersign it, which is how a quote to one buyer is written, and a catalog must not derive a public listing from it or feed its scope examples into search. The rule follows from what a listing is for: a document only one party may form has no business answering the market's searches. A catalog may say that such an offer exists and count it in a total, and it may show the offer in full to the buyer it names, but it may not show its terms to anyone else. The rules are in section 12.1.1 of the specification.

Where else this applies

The same pattern works for a public marketplace, for a private company catalog (see Internal SoWs) or for a federation of both. Reputation can then be stated against signed documents: "this provider completed 40 engagements under these exact terms" is a claim about recorded evidence that anyone can check against the documents. The full derivation rules are in section 12 of the specification.

Next: The specification