Tasks
Signer · 11
Sign set
SUBMITREJECTSCHEDULESTARTPROGRESSSUSPENDRESUMECOMPLETEFAILCANCELTIMEOUT
Dimension setnone
Humainary · Specification 3.15.3
Serventis
Give software a shared language for what happens.
Serventis defines small vocabularies for reporting actions and results. A service reports a failed call. A lock reports a timed-out acquisition. A consumer can interpret both as degraded operation and bring them into one view. Each domain keeps its own vocabulary; consumers choose what to conclude from the reports.
Domain signsReadingsInterpretations
40
Registry entries
237
Sign slots
161
Distinct lexemes
18
Sign families
51
Dimension slots
One service
Checkout calls payments. After two retries, the request expires.
Checkout reports each step as a sign from the Services vocabulary. It pairs each sign with CALLER to show its perspective. Together, they form a signal.
What a consumer receives, and the status it reads from each
- CALLno reading
- FAILDEGRADED
- RETRYno reading
- FAILDEGRADED
- RETRYno reading
- EXPIREDEGRADED
A consumer subscribed to checkout reads each signal into a status. FAIL and EXPIRE read DEGRADED. Some observations support no conclusion: starting a call does not, by itself, tell us whether a service is operating well, so the consumer produces no status reading for CALL, and none for RETRY.
DEGRADED is itself a sign, from the Statuses vocabulary, so the consumer can report it for payments just as checkout reported the call. A second consumer weighs that status against the deployment: checkout depends on payments, and payments has read DEGRADED for ten minutes. It reports WARNING, from the Situations vocabulary.
A second domain
A lock reports in its own words, and reads the same way.
Inventory guards its stock records with a lock. When an acquisition waits too long, the lock reports TIMEOUT, from the Locks vocabulary. The consumer that read checkout’s FAIL reads TIMEOUT as DEGRADED too.
| Payments, from checkout | FAIL | → | DEGRADED |
| Stock lock | TIMEOUT | → | DEGRADED |
So payments and the stock lock appear side by side in one view, although Services and Locks share no words and the consumer holds no translation between them. Each domain needs one path up to Statuses, not a path to every other domain.
The reports themselves are unchanged. A consumer that needs to tell a failed call from a timed-out lock still has both signs, and can draw a different conclusion from them.
What you can build
Consumers that turn reports into answers.
Each consumer subscribes to reports and produces something of its own. The first two read the same checkout signals and come away with different answers.
An operational view
One status per subject, whatever its domain.
- Receives
- Signs from services, locks and queues
- Produces
- payments DEGRADED
stock lock DEGRADED
orders queue STABLE
A diagnostic trail
The story of one request, step by step.
- Receives
- The same checkout signals
- Produces
- checkout → payments
2 retries; request expired
Agent oversight
Whether coordinating agents keep their promises.
- Receives
- OFFER, PROMISE, FULFILL and BREACH from the Agents vocabulary
- Produces
- planner STABLE
retriever DEGRADED
The oversight consumer reads FULFILL as STABLE and BREACH as DEGRADED.
A first step
Choose a vocabulary for your subject, report what happens, and connect a consumer.
Reference · Scope
The specification is the language. Not its interpretation, not its execution.
A working system involves three separable things. Only the first is normative, so the specification says only what is true of Serventis rather than of its first implementation.
Normative
The language
What a sign is, what a dimension is, that vocabularies are finite and fixed, that a signal is a qualified sign, that translation is partial, so some observations support no reading. Two implementations that disagree here are not implementing the same thing.
Documented
The policy
Which status a sign indicates, which episode role it takes, whether it reports an act or a result. These are judgments; a consumer that reads a sign differently holds a different opinion within the language, not a misunderstanding of it.
Per runtime
The affordances
Precomputed lookup, interned signal spaces, ordinal addressing. How one runtime makes the model cheap. Another language may find them wrong, so none is imposed.
| Conformance tier | Obligation | Entries |
|---|---|---|
| Universal | Required. Every projection provides all of them; without them a projection cannot take part in ascent. | 8 |
| Registered domain | Optional to provide, but fixed in membership, meanings and primary/derived classification once provided. | 32 |
| Projection-specific | Unconstrained in membership; must satisfy the design rules. | open |
A minimal conformant projection provides the observation model, the two set types, the two instrument protocols, the six universal vocabularies and both vocabulary templates.
A projection is an implementation of the specification in one programming language; Java is the reference projection. Projections preserve the registered vocabularies and their meanings across languages; consumers choose their interpretation policies.
Design principles
Four rules shape every vocabulary.
- Bounded vocabularies over open ontologiesEvery sign set is finite, indexed and fixed at publication. Only a closed alphabet lets a consumer ask total questions: does this interpretation handle every sign? Has it seen the whole alphabet?
- Implementer-observable signsIn a primary vocabulary the producer never computes a rate, compares against a baseline, correlates, remembers or infers. It names an act it performed or a result it received. Recognising patterns is the consumer’s work.
- Partial translation as a featureA sign with no reading in a target vocabulary yields the absent value, never a default. The absence says this observation supports no conclusion there. Forcing totality would manufacture readings the evidence does not support.
- Ascent over flatteningDomains do not share one sign set. Meaning is composed hierarchically, from domain to status to situation, rather than by forcing every domain into one vocabulary that fits none of them well.
The observation model
A sign classifies. A dimension qualifies.
An observation is atomic, a bare sign, or qualified: a sign together with a dimension, called a signal. Every observation exposes its sign, so a consumer that needs only the classification reads both alike.
- Symbol
- The base classification marker. Carries a name unique within its set and a stable index, dense from zero. Signs and dimensions are both symbols.
- Sign
- Classifies what is being reported. Belongs to exactly one sign set and carries no meaning independent of it.
- Dimension
- Qualifies a sign. Its set has one uniform kind: a category of unordered peers, or a spectrum whose order is rank.
- Signal
- A qualified sign. Immutable; two signals are equal when their sign and dimension are equal.
- Sign set
- A finite, indexed, ordered collection of signs. Membership never changes after publication; adding one is a new version.
- Signal space
- The product of a sign set and a dimension set, with cardinality |S| × |D|. A property of the vocabulary, not a required construct.
One vocabulary, its whole signal space
Guards: four signs, two criterion dimensions, eight signals. The same sign under two dimensions is two different observations, which is what earns a dimension its place.
Dimensions are perspective, not location. Host, region, shard and tenant are properties of the subject and belong to its name, not to the observation.
Sign
× Identity
× Permission
ATTEMPT
ATTEMPT × IDENTITY
ATTEMPT × PERMISSION
CHALLENGE
CHALLENGE × IDENTITY
CHALLENGE × PERMISSION
GRANT
GRANT × IDENTITY
GRANT × PERMISSION
DENY
DENY × IDENTITYa bad credential
DENY × PERMISSIONa known caller without the right
Translation
Reading a sign into another vocabulary.
No reading and UNKNOWN
No reading means the observation supports no conclusion in the target vocabulary. UNKNOWN is an explicit verdict: a determination was attempted but remained inconclusive. It belongs to Outcomes, not to Statuses.
Act or result
Every sign reports an operation, an act performed, or an outcome, a result observed. One outcome often supports a reading on its own; one operation rarely does. A sign with no reading of its own can still matter by its position in a sequence.
The readings in the opening sections come from the documented policy for Services and Locks. A consumer may adopt another policy and remain conformant.
Instruments and classification
The producer attaches an instrument and reports what it observed.
Signer
Emits bare signs
For a vocabulary with no dimension set: Locks, Queues, Caches, Processes. 19 of the 32 domain vocabularies.
Signaler
Emits signals
For a vocabulary with a dimension set: Services, Leases, Messages, Evals. 13 of the 32.
An instrument exposes exactly one vocabulary and adds no runtime: it does not buffer, coalesce, reorder or accumulate. Emission, ordering, subscription and lifecycle belong to Substrates, the companion specification for circuits that carry values from emitters to subscribers in a guaranteed order. Serventis presupposes it and never reinterprets it; Substrates knows nothing of Serventis.
Primary
A lock reports TIMEOUT
It received the unsuccessful result of its blocking acquisition and reports that result directly. Every component of every observation is chosen from a current act or result.
Derived
A timer reports MISS
It received an elapsed duration and a configured threshold, and had to compare them to choose between MEET and MISS. One derived component makes the whole vocabulary derived.
The boundary is who performs the work. If the mechanism observed has already compared or measured and hands the result over, reporting it is direct observation. The names alone do not reveal the difference.
Universal vocabularies · Required
The upper strata, shared by every domain.
Six shared vocabularies and two templates. Statuses and Situations are the readings and interpretations every domain ascends into; Operations, Outcomes, Systems and Trends are shared signs any domain can be read through. Every projection provides all eight, in every language.
Statuses
7 × 3 · derived
The operational reading, offered with a stated confidence and read from domain signs. Not an HTTP status, not an exit code, not a state machine’s state.
CONVERGINGSTABLEDIVERGINGERRATICDEGRADEDDEFECTIVEDOWN
TENTATIVE
MEASURED
CONFIRMED
Situations
3 × 3 · derived
The situational interpretation: what a state of things means for action. Not an incident, an alert or a page: what to do about it is somebody else’s decision.
NORMALWARNINGCRITICAL
CONSTANT
VARIABLE
VOLATILE
Operations
3 · primary
Episode roles, witnessed as they happen. Not a method call or a unit of work.
BEGINADVANCEEND
Outcomes
3 · primary
Verdicts, witnessed as they are reached. UNKNOWN is a verdict; no reading is not one.
SUCCESSFAILUNKNOWN
Systems
4 × 4 · derived
Pressure against a limit, by the class of limit: room, throughput, connectivity or time.
NORMALLIMITALARMFAULT
CategorySPACE · FLOW · LINK · TIME
Trends
5 · derived
The shape of a series, read from history rather than from one moment.
STABLEDRIFTSPIKECYCLECHAOS
Surveys
template × 3
Agreement among observers. Fixes the dimension set; the caller supplies the sign set.
DIVIDED
MAJORITY
UNANIMOUS
Cycles
template × 3
How a sign recurred in the stream: first time, again at once, or back after others.
CategorySINGLE · REPEAT · RETURN
The catalog · 32 domains
Thirty-two domains, each its own sign set.
A domain describes one kind of subject — a lock, a pool, a conversation — in a finite sign set of its own, with a dimension set only where the same sign genuinely means something different from each side.
Each domain is optional to provide and fixed once provided: ship none, or ship Locks with exactly its registered signs. A projection that ships a registered domain, in any language, is legible to every consumer written against it anywhere.
Each domain shows its instrument and shape, its sign set in registry order, and its dimension set where it has one, named by dimension family. All dimension sets here are categories. Unmarked domains are primary.
Execution
6 domains
Services
Signaler · 16 × 2
Sign set
STARTSTOPCALLSUCCESSFAILRECOURSEREDIRECTEXPIRERETRYREJECTDISCARDDELAYSCHEDULESUSPENDRESUMEDISCONNECT
Dimension set · PerspectiveCALLER · CALLEE
Processes
Signer · 9
Sign set
SPAWNSTARTSTOPFAILCRASHKILLRESTARTSUSPENDRESUME
Dimension setnone
Transactions
Signaler · 8 × 2
Sign set
STARTPREPARECOMMITROLLBACKABORTEXPIRECONFLICTCOMPENSATE
Dimension set · PerspectiveCOORDINATOR · PARTICIPANT
Timers
Signaler · 2 × 2
Derived
Sign set
MEETMISS
Dimension set · Reference pointDEADLINE · THRESHOLD
Changes
Signer · 6
Sign set
STARTAPPLYFAILREJECTREVERTPROGRESS
Dimension setnone
Synchronization
3 domains
Locks
Signer · 10
Sign set
ATTEMPTACQUIREGRANTDENYTIMEOUTRELEASEUPGRADEDOWNGRADECONTESTABANDON
Dimension setnone
Latches
Signer · 6
Sign set
AWAITARRIVERELEASETIMEOUTRESETABANDON
Dimension setnone
Atomics
Signer · 8
Sign set
ATTEMPTSUCCESSFAILSPINYIELDBACKOFFPARKEXHAUST
Dimension setnone
Pooling
4 domains
Resources
Signer · 6
Sign set
ATTEMPTACQUIREGRANTDENYTIMEOUTRELEASE
Dimension setnone
Leases
Signaler · 9 × 2
Sign set
ACQUIREDENYEXTENDEXPIREGRANTPROBERELEASERENEWREVOKE
Dimension set · PerspectiveLESSOR · LESSEE
Pools
Signer · 4
Sign set
EXPANDCONTRACTBORROWRECLAIM
Dimension setnone
Exchanges
Signaler · 2 × 2
Sign set
CONTRACTTRANSFER
Dimension set · PerspectivePROVIDER · RECEIVER
Data
5 domains
Queues
Signer · 4
Sign set
ENQUEUEDEQUEUEOVERFLOWUNDERFLOW
Dimension setnone
Stacks
Signer · 4
Sign set
PUSHPOPOVERFLOWUNDERFLOW
Dimension setnone
Caches
Signer · 7
Sign set
LOOKUPHITMISSSTOREEVICTEXPIREREMOVE
Dimension setnone
Pipelines
Signer · 12
Derived
Sign set
INPUTOUTPUTTRANSFORMFILTERAGGREGATEBUFFERBACKPRESSUREOVERFLOWCHECKPOINTWATERMARKLAGSKIP
Dimension setnone
Messages
Signaler · 7 × 3
Sign set
PUBLISHDELIVERACKNACKREDELIVEREXHAUSTEXPIRE
Dimension set · PerspectivePRODUCER · BROKER · CONSUMER
Flow control
5 domains
Flows
Signaler · 2 × 3
Sign set
SUCCESSFAIL
Dimension set · StageINGRESS · TRANSIT · EGRESS
Routers
Signer · 9
Derived
Sign set
SENDRECEIVEFORWARDROUTEDROPFRAGMENTREASSEMBLECORRUPTREORDER
Dimension setnone
Valves
Signer · 6
Sign set
PASSDENYEXPANDCONTRACTDROPDRAIN
Dimension setnone
Breakers
Signer · 6
Sign set
CLOSEOPENHALF_OPENTRIPPROBERESET
Dimension setnone
Guards
Signaler · 4 × 2
Sign set
ATTEMPTCHALLENGEGRANTDENY
Dimension set · CriterionIDENTITY · PERMISSION
Instrumentation
6 domains
Counters
Signer · 3
Sign set
INCREMENTOVERFLOWRESET
Dimension setnone
Gauges
Signer · 5
Sign set
INCREMENTDECREMENTOVERFLOWUNDERFLOWRESET
Dimension setnone
Probes
Signaler · 6 × 2
Sign set
CONNECTDISCONNECTTRANSFERPROCESSSUCCEEDFAIL
Dimension set · PerspectiveOUTBOUND · INBOUND
Sensors
Signaler · 3 × 3
Derived
Sign set
BELOWNOMINALABOVE
Dimension set · Reference pointBASELINE · THRESHOLD · TARGET
Logs
Signer · 4
Derived
Sign set
SEVEREWARNINGINFODEBUG
Dimension setnone
Evals
Signaler · 5 × 8
Derived
Sign set
PASSFAILUNKNOWNSKIPERROR
Dimension set · CriterionCORRECTNESS · COMPLETENESS · GROUNDEDNESS · HELPFULNESS · ADHERENCE · TOOLING · ROUTING · SAFETY
Coordination
3 domains
Agents
Signaler · 10 × 2
Sign set
OFFERPROMISEACCEPTFULFILLRETRACTBREACHINQUIREOBSERVEDEPENDVALIDATE
Dimension set · PerspectivePROMISER · PROMISEE
Actors
Signer · 11
Sign set
ASKAFFIRMEXPLAINREPORTREQUESTCOMMANDACKNOWLEDGEDENYCLARIFYPROMISEDELIVER
Dimension setnone
Members
Signaler · 7 × 2
Sign set
JOINLEAVESUSPECTREFUTEEVICTELECTRESIGN
Dimension set · PerspectiveSELF · PEER
Shape is signs, or signs × dimensions. Membership, meanings and primary/derived classification are normative; each entry is addressed as registry:<name>, and an entry is never renamed, because a rename would be a different vocabulary.
Cross-reference · Sign families
237 sign slots, eighteen kinds of question.
Read across the domains above, a sign family groups the lexemes that answer the same kind of question about a subject. Membership is assigned per slot, one sign in one vocabulary, so every slot belongs to exactly one family.
Slots by family, in catalog order
LEXEME also read in another family
01
Acquisition
18 · 32
Requesting, holding and giving up a scarce thing. The most reused family: a request that may be refused, opened by an attempt, decided by a grant or denial, closed by a release.
ABANDONACQUIREARRIVEATTEMPTAWAITBORROWDENYDOWNGRADEEXPIREEXTENDGRANTPROBERECLAIMRELEASERENEWREVOKETIMEOUTUPGRADE
Drawn on byAtomics, Latches, Leases, Locks, Pools, Resources
02
Lifecycle
9 · 15
The existence and running state of a long-lived subject: creation, running, stopping, destruction and the suspensions between. About a thing that exists, where Work is about a job that completes.
CRASHFAILKILLRESTARTRESUMESPAWNSTARTSTOPSUSPEND
Drawn on byProcesses, Services, Tasks
03
Work
11 · 14
A unit of work moving through its stages: submitted, scheduled, started, progressing, finished one way or another.
CALLCANCELCOMPLETEEXPIREFAILPROGRESSREJECTSCHEDULESTARTSUBMITTIMEOUT
Drawn on byChanges, Services, Tasks, Transactions
04
Episode
5 · 6
Bracketing as such: the universal Operations vocabulary and the domain signs that exist purely to open or stage an episode. Small by design; most bracketing is read from domain signs by their structure.
ADVANCEBEGINENDPREPARESTART
Drawn on byChanges, Operations, Transactions
05
Verdict
19 · 30
Results: what an operation decided, observed or produced. Rich in domain synonyms for success and failure, deliberately, because a vocabulary reads better when its verdict is named in its own terms.
ABORTACKAPPLYBREACHCOMMITERRORFAILFULFILLHITMEETMISSNACKPASSREVERTROLLBACKSKIPSUCCEEDSUCCESSUNKNOWN
Drawn on byAgents, Atomics, Caches, Changes, Evals, Flows, Messages, Outcomes, Probes, Services, Timers, Transactions
06
Admission
11 · 14
Letting something through, or not. A decision made about incoming work by a gatekeeper, where a verdict is made about completed work by whoever did it.
ATTEMPTCHALLENGEDELAYDENYDISCARDDROPFILTERGRANTPASSREJECTSKIP
Drawn on byChanges, Guards, Pipelines, Routers, Services, Valves
07
Boundary
6 · 13
Capacity limits reached. Its signature is a symmetric pair, OVERFLOW and UNDERFLOW, wherever a container has two ends it can run out of.
BACKPRESSUREEXHAUSTLAGLIMITOVERFLOWUNDERFLOW
Drawn on byAtomics, Counters, Gauges, Messages, Pipelines, Queues, Stacks, Systems
08
Elasticity
3 · 5
Capacity changing size. EXPAND and CONTRACT are the pair; DRAIN is the emptying case.
CONTRACTDRAINEXPAND
Drawn on byPools, Valves
09
Contention
6 · 6
Competing for progress: what a subject does while it cannot proceed. Directly observed actions and results, not an inferred judgment that it was slow.
BACKOFFCONFLICTCONTESTPARKSPINYIELD
Drawn on byAtomics, Locks, Transactions
10
Transport
17 · 19
Moving something from one place to another. Network transport and in-process container movement share a family because the observable shape is the same.
CONNECTDELIVERDEQUEUEDISCONNECTENQUEUEFORWARDFRAGMENTINPUTOUTPUTPOPPUBLISHPUSHREASSEMBLERECEIVEROUTESENDTRANSFER
Drawn on byExchanges, Messages, Pipelines, Probes, Queues, Routers, Services, Stacks
11
Storage
6 · 7
Keeping something and finding it again. The characteristic sequence is a LOOKUP followed by a HIT or a MISS.
BUFFEREVICTEXPIRELOOKUPREMOVESTORE
Drawn on byCaches, Messages, Pipelines
12
Recovery
11 · 12
Returning to normal after something went wrong. The breaker’s TRIP, OPEN, HALF_OPEN, PROBE, CLOSE cycle is its most complete expression.
CLOSECOMPENSATEHALF_OPENOPENPROBERECOURSEREDELIVERREDIRECTRESETRETRYTRIP
Drawn on byBreakers, Latches, Messages, Services, Transactions
13
Integrity
4 · 4
Damage and disorder in what was moved or stored, and the bookkeeping kept against them.
CHECKPOINTCORRUPTREORDERWATERMARK
Drawn on byPipelines, Routers
14
Counting
3 · 5
Numeric movement without a subject to speak of. The narrowest family, and the one closest to conventional metrics.
DECREMENTINCREMENTRESET
Drawn on byCounters, Gauges
15
Assessment
22 · 25
Readings rather than events: a conclusion about how things are. Home of the universal ascent targets, and derived in its entirety, because inference is what produces its signs.
ABOVEALARMBELOWCHAOSCONVERGINGCRITICALCYCLEDEBUGDEFECTIVEDEGRADEDDIVERGINGDOWNDRIFTERRATICFAULTINFONOMINALNORMALSEVERESPIKESTABLEWARNING
Drawn on byLogs, Sensors, Situations, Statuses, Systems, Trends
16
Speech act
19 · 20
Communicative moves between parties: asking, disagreeing, promising, offering, accepting, retracting. The utterance is the event.
ACCEPTACKNOWLEDGEAFFIRMASKCLARIFYCOMMANDCONTRACTDELIVERDENYDEPENDEXPLAININQUIREOBSERVEOFFERPROMISEREPORTREQUESTRETRACTVALIDATE
Drawn on byActors, Agents, Exchanges
17
Processing
3 · 3
Working on data already in hand. Transport moves it, Storage keeps it, Admission decides whether it passes, and Processing changes it.
AGGREGATEPROCESSTRANSFORM
Drawn on byPipelines, Probes
18
Membership
7 · 7
Belonging to a group and holding a role in it: joining and leaving, suspicion and its refutation or eviction, election and resignation. The group’s view of its members.
ELECTEVICTJOINLEAVEREFUTERESIGNSUSPECT
Drawn on byMembers
Counts are lexemes · slots. Families are an organising lens over the registry, not a structure the specification defines: they give vocabulary reuse something concrete to reuse from.
Cross-family lexemes
Fifteen words that mean different things.
A sign has no meaning outside its set, so a consumer resolves every sign against the vocabulary that produced it. The registry renames nothing; it lists the cases so nobody builds a cross-vocabulary lexeme table by accident.
ATTEMPT
Acquisitiontry to take a held thing (Atomics, Locks, Resources)
Admissionpresent a credential or request at a gate (Guards)
CONTRACT
Elasticityshrink capacity (Pools, Valves)
Speech actcommit to terms (Exchanges)
DELIVER
Speech actpresent completed work (Actors)
Transporthand a message to a receiver (Messages)
DENY
Acquisitionrefuse a request for a held thing (Leases, Locks, Resources)
Admissionrefuse entry at a gate (Guards, Valves)
Speech actdisagree with a proposition (Actors)
EVICT
Storageremove an entry for capacity or policy (Caches)
Membershipremove a member declared failed (Members)
EXPIRE
Acquisitiona lease’s term ran out (Leases)
Workthe work outlived its deadline (Services, Transactions)
Storagea held item outlived its time to live (Caches, Messages)
FAIL
Verdictthe result was failure (Atomics, Changes, Evals, Flows, Outcomes, Probes, Services)
Lifecyclethe process died (Processes)
Workthe job did not complete (Tasks)
GRANT
Acquisitionhand over a held thing (Leases, Locks, Resources)
Admissionlet a caller through a gate (Guards)
PASS
Admissionallowed through (Valves)
Verdictsatisfied the criterion (Evals)
PROBE
Acquisitioncheck a lease is still valid (Leases)
Recoverya trial request testing whether recovery is safe (Breakers)
REJECT
Admissionrefused at submission (Changes, Services)
Workthe job was not accepted (Tasks)
RESET
Countingreturn a counter to zero (Counters, Gauges)
Recoveryreturn a mechanism to its initial state (Breakers, Latches)
SKIP
Admissionan element was passed over (Pipelines)
Verdictthe criterion was deliberately not evaluated (Evals)
START
Lifecyclethe subject began running (Processes, Services)
Workthe job began executing (Tasks)
Episodean episode opened (Changes, Transactions)
TIMEOUT
Acquisitionthe wait for a held thing expired (Latches, Locks, Resources)
Workthe job exceeded its budget (Tasks)
FAIL in Atomics is a compare-and-swap that will be retried. FAIL in Processes is terminal. Same word, different structure behind it.
Dimension families
18 of 40 entries qualify their signs. The rest need not.
A dimension is warranted only when the same sign genuinely means something different under each member. A queue enqueues, and there is no second viewpoint on that.
Perspective category
Which party to an interaction is reporting. The same event seen from both ends yields two signals that differ only in dimension, which is exactly what reveals a disagreement between the parties.
| Vocabulary | The ends |
|---|---|
| Services | CALLER · CALLEE |
| Agents | PROMISER · PROMISEE |
| Transactions | COORDINATOR · PARTICIPANT |
| Leases | LESSOR · LESSEE |
| Exchanges | PROVIDER · RECEIVER |
| Probes | OUTBOUND · INBOUND |
| Messages | PRODUCER · BROKER · CONSUMER |
| Members | SELF · PEER |
| Family | Vocabulary | Members |
|---|---|---|
| Stage | Flows | INGRESS · TRANSIT · EGRESS |
| Constraint kind | Systems | SPACE · FLOW · LINK · TIME |
| Reference point | Timers | DEADLINE · THRESHOLD |
| Sensors | BASELINE · THRESHOLD · TARGET | |
| Criterion | Evals | CORRECTNESS · COMPLETENESS · GROUNDEDNESS · HELPFULNESS · ADHERENCE · TOOLING · ROUTING · SAFETY |
| Guards | IDENTITY · PERMISSION | |
| Recurrence | Cycles | SINGLE · REPEAT · RETURN |
THRESHOLD in Timers and THRESHOLD in Sensors intend the same thing, and remain two distinct dimensions that must never be unified.
Three spectra: confidence, consensus and variability
Statuses · confidence
TENTATIVE
MEASURED
CONFIRMED
How strong the evidence for a reading is.
Surveys · consensus
DIVIDED
MAJORITY
UNANIMOUS
How far independent observers agree.
Situations · variability
CONSTANT
VARIABLE
VOLATILE
How much the condition itself fluctuates. A volatile condition can still be assessed with confidence.
Designing a vocabulary
Six rules, checked when a vocabulary is published.
- Implementer-observableIn a primary vocabulary every component is chosen from a current act or result. CAS failed: CONTEST. Buffer full: OVERFLOW. Never lag computed from timestamps.
- BoundedA finite sign set fixed at publication. A new event is a new version, never a sign invented at runtime.
- BalancedOperations come with their outcomes. Do not emit mechanical acts without the semantic results that follow them.
- TranslatableEnough signs read into Statuses on their own, or an episode structure a consumer can interpret, or both. A vocabulary that supports neither cannot ascend.
- Perspective, not locationA dimension changes what the sign means. Which party, which stage, which criterion; never which host, region or tenant.
- Reuse before inventionExtend a family’s canonical form before coining words. Locks takes Acquisition’s core and adds only UPGRADE, DOWNGRADE, CONTEST and ABANDON.
Shapes that recur across vocabularies
Request, then outcome
ATTEMPTGRANTDENY
SUBMITSCHEDULEREJECT
Start, run, terminal
SPAWNSTARTSTOPCRASH
STARTPREPARECOMMITROLLBACK
Symmetric pairs
OVERFLOWUNDERFLOW
SUSPENDRESUME
EXPANDCONTRACT
Time against a limit
TIMEOUTEXPIRE
MEETMISS