Request, approval, dispatch and verified completion
Four words that Beyond never uses for one another. Asking for something, deciding it, sending it to a provider and seeing it verifiably finished are separate records.
- Availability: Experimental
- Evidence: Read from source
- Explanation
The problem this solves
"Approved" is not "started". "Started" is not "finished". A green workflow is not a verified deployment, and an approval for production is not a production deployment. When these blur, people repeat actions that already ran, or report work as delivered that never left the queue. Beyond keeps four words strictly apart.
The four words
| Word | It means | Recorded as | It does not mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| Request | Someone asked for something to happen | The ask, who made it and when | That anyone agreed, or that anything was sent |
| Approval | A person decided, with their name and the time | A decision on one exact thing: a definition, a scope, a test result, a tested revision | That anything ran. An approval starts nothing by itself |
| Dispatch | The platform sent the approved thing to an external provider | An attempt with a state of its own | That the provider started it, or finished it |
| Verified completion | The outcome was observed, and the expected evidence was read and matched the exact thing that was approved | Evidence attached to the attempt | That a person accepted it. Acceptance is another approval |
Two more words complete the picture:
- Needs attention: a dispatch whose outcome is unknown. The platform stops and hands it to a person.
- Reconciliation: that person looks at the provider, and records what is true: the session or run that exists, or that none does.
How they appear in Delegate
| Stage | Request | Approval | Dispatch | Verified completion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Requirement | You record a request | Approve requirement | The analysis is sent to the intake agent | The agent's proposal arrives. A person still evaluates it |
| Development | A planned release | Approve scope, then Launch development | Queued → Dispatching → External session created | The agent submits a result. Accept result is a further human approval |
| Test | Request test deployment | The request freezes what was approved | Queued → Running | Completed, with evidence per component that matches the run and the revision. Accept test result is a further human approval |
| Production | — | Approve for production | Does not exist | Does not exist |
The guides: Review and planning, External work, Versions and delivery status.
Rules that follow
- An agent never approves. Every approval is a person's, and the server refuses an agent's credential for any of them.
- An approval refers to one exact thing. If that thing changes afterwards (the request was edited, the definition refined, the branch moved), the platform says so or refuses, instead of carrying the approval over.
- An unknown outcome is never retried automatically. It becomes Needs attention and waits for a person. Sending it again blindly could start a second agent or deploy twice.
- A reported result is not a verified one. What an agent reports about its own tests, and what a workflow reports about itself, are shown as reports with their source.
- "Production approved" means approved. In Delegate it reads Production approved · execution pending, and nothing was published, because production publishing does not exist.
Reading a status you are unsure about
Ask the four questions in order: was it requested, was it approved and by whom, was it dispatched, and is there evidence that it finished. The first "no" is where the work actually is.
Next action
Something stuck between two of these words? Recover from an uncertain outcome.
Related: Beyond Delegate overview · Supported limits