3. Commitments that support action

Enough basis for the next work

An undertaking needs a basis that lets participants act without inventing missing commitments. Intended users, required outcomes, constraints, interfaces and unresolved matters can take different forms. A substantial product can need a PRD and specialist companions. A bounded repair can need the person's direction and the current requirements that the repair affects.

The form is adequate when it supports the decisions and coordination at hand. A new session does not by itself create a need for a new project definition. But an informal request can leave consequential questions open. The question is what dependent work will assume, not whether a preferred template exists.

A behavioral commitment differs from its implementation. Recovery of the accepted document after an interrupted save can remain an obligation while the transaction mechanism changes. But a particular algorithm can also be an explicit adopted commitment. The amount of detail does not show whether a statement is incidental or governing. Its standing comes from the actual decision and context.

Different kinds of statement

A commitment governs work through an applicable decision or source. An assumption gives a provisional basis for reasoning. A proposal is a candidate choice. An observation tells what occurred under identified conditions. These distinctions stay important after the work is authorized.

A person can authorize a prototype that assumes an operating range. That authorization permits the experiment. It does not prove the range or make it a product promise. A requirement such as “handle large documents efficiently” can hide unresolved values behind definite language. If someone fills in those values only to complete a document, an unknown becomes an invented commitment.

Uncertainty can stay local. An open question about a visual detail need not stop a persistence test. An open question about a coordinate convention can invalidate every dependent numerical result. One “blocked” label for the whole project hides that difference. A useful account tells which action depends on which remaining condition.

The work of a source

Each source supports particular claims. An interview can support an account of a difficulty that a user reported, while a test supports an observed behavior. A publication can explain a method without proof that its implementation works on a particular platform. Recency is not a universal rule to resolve a conflict between sources.

Extraction adds another relationship. A trustworthy original can produce an inaccurate transcription: a missing unit, a changed symbol or a flattened diagram. The authority of the source and the fidelity of the derivative need different grounds. An exact hash can establish content identity. It cannot establish that someone understood the identified content correctly.

A conflict can come from different subjects, editions or meanings, or from a real disagreement that nobody has resolved. The difference matters. A record can accurately hold a historical requirement and a current proposal while neither is the current commitment. If an agent chooses whichever statement is easier to implement, it suppresses the question instead of resolving it.

A decision that can be considered

A reserved decision is easier to make when its subject is concrete. A proposed text, a candidate interface or a comparison gives the person something to inspect, together with alternatives and their consequences. A request for approval before the useful choice is ready can move ordinary production back to the person.

The opposite failure occurs when someone treats permission to investigate as acceptance of future content. Both errors lose the actual decision. Continuity requires an understanding of what was authorized and what remains open. It does not require a repeated approval question each time work changes hands.

The Root undertaking made this distinction visible in its separate content decisions and gate decisions. The owner approved the revised maintenance and reflective guidance in PR #1785, before the later readiness and product decisions that chapter 9 describes. Each was an actual approval with a different subject. If the first approval had counted as acceptance of every later consequence, it would have erased the choices that the later work was meant to prepare.

A project basis can contain sections that are each sound but conflict as a whole. One section can promise recovery while another excludes the state that recovery needs. When someone follows one representative activity across the sections, the conflict can become visible. Structural checks help with representation. Substantive examination asks whether the assembled basis supports the intended result.