How an agent catalog uses SoWs
A catalog is where agents get discovered. A statement of work is where terms get agreed. The rule that connects them: for anything with a price, the listing is generated from the contract, not written separately. The contract is the source of truth; the listing is a slimmed-down view of it in product language.
The contract is written first
The natural instinct is to write the marketing first and the contract per deal. This specification mandates the reverse for priced offerings (section 12 of the spec). The provider writes and signs a standing proposal SoW once per offering: every clause complete, the counterparty blank. The catalog listing is derived from it. The buyer who clicks through is countersigning the very document the ad came from, and that countersign is a request to form rather than the deal itself: the provider's runtime finishes the job by signing the completed instance, or refuses it by naming a qualification the buyer did not meet.
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 ad 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 no force. Not a deal yet. │ │ 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
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 purchase time. 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 ad 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 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. The query that found the agent is text the engagement actually covers.
- Conditions are published in advance. An offer may state qualifications a buyer has to meet before its countersign is accepted: 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 precisely 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 gets 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, but 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 enforcement label. One link fetches the full standing proposal. The shopper never has to wonder whether the fine print differs from the ad, because the ad 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 per 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 per offering. Update the standing proposal and the listing regenerates; running engagements are untouched, because each one is pinned to the version both owners countersigned. 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 terms team never saw.
Informal listings are exempt from all of this. An agent that answers questions for nothing, with no engage action on the listing, can be listed from its own manifest, no contract required. The requirement binds where money or commitments appear. A free offering a shopper can actually 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 one or feed its scope examples into search. The rule falls out of 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 not 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, a private company catalog (see Internal SoWs), or 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 rather than a star rating. The full derivation rules are in section 12 of the specification.