How a document becomes binding
The same document passes through named states, and each name answers one question: does this bind anyone yet? The work has its own stages around those signatures, and the two at the edges are the ones most often skipped.
Document states
- Template SoW. The document is complete and unsigned, and it binds nobody. Sent to a specific counterparty for consideration, it is a SoW proposal.
- Standing proposal SoW. The seller has signed, and the counterparty seat is blank. This is what a provider publishes once for each offering, and what a catalog listing is derived from. It still binds nobody.
- Directed standing proposal. This is a standing proposal that names one party as the only one entitled to countersign it. The seat is still blank, so it still binds nobody, but it is an offer to that party alone. It gets no catalog listing, it must state when it ends, and it is used up by the deal it forms. This is how a seller quotes one buyer a price below its list price without publishing that price to everyone.
- Request to form. The buyer has countersigned a standing proposal. That fills in the buyer's seat and the start date and produces an instance carrying one signature, the buyer's. A document with one signature has no force, whoever signed it. The seller's runtime completes formation by signing the finished instance, and it must refuse a buyer who does not meet a qualification the offer states.
- Agreed. Both owners' signatures sit over the same bytes, and the start date has not arrived. The deal exists, and nothing is in force yet.
- Active. The deal is agreed and the start date has arrived. From then on the runtimes enforce it, until it ends, is amended or is terminated.
- Amendment proposed. A full replacement at the next version number is open with one signature on it. It has no force either. The current version keeps governing every task until the replacement is approved, denied, withdrawn or lapses.
- Amended, exhausted, lapsed or terminated. An engagement ends when a higher version replaces it, when its not-to-exceed cap is reached, when its end date passes, or when either owner ends it. At the gate all of these are treated the same way: the counterparty goes back to the general admission rules.
The start and end are ordinary fields of the document. A signed deal that has not started yet grants nothing. The states are listed in section 7.1 of the specification, and the request to form in section 12.1.
The working lifecycle
The states describe the document. Before anyone signs, the buyer can send real sample files as a marked trial run and find out whether the fit is there at all, while walking away still costs nothing. After the work is delivered, the buyer can put a judgment on the record: accepted, or rejected with a stated reason. Neither stage is required.
validate (13) before signatures: probe the fit with real files, walk away for free agree (7.1) countersign; the seller's runtime completes formation (12.1) deliver tasks run; problems are raised and resolved in place (14) review (15) at completion: acceptance or rejection, with reasons, on the record