Lesson 4.44.4 SSoR tracks where the work stands

In everyday life. In the restaurant from 4.1, each table has one order ticket on the rail. It shows what the table ordered and what is done. A cook who starts the next shift reads the ticket, not their memory.

An SSoR, or State System of Record, is the governed memory of the work. It keeps one case file for each matter. A matter is a piece of work carried to an end, such as an invoice from the day it arrives to the day it is paid. The case file says where the matter stands and how it got there. It keeps the evidence for each step: what was tried, what failed, who approved what, and why.¹

Keep one line in mind: the company's system holds the fact, and the case file holds the story. The system shows whether Dave's approval exists. The case file holds the next step, and points to that fact.

A case file starts when the matter does. The first run that sees the invoice writes "received", with the date, and an invoice that arrives between runs waits in the inbox until the trigger fires, inside the tolerance the Role Contract states. It closes when its last step is a system fact, such as paid, recorded through DSoR. A run reads the open case files whose next step is due, and that list is what the trigger hands it.

Three rules make it a system of record, not a notebook.

• Each entry is checked when it is added. The system checks it against rules about who may add what, not a person reading each line. People, systems and workers add their own steps: a worker may record that it is waiting for Dave, and never that Dave approved. Nobody records a step for someone else.
• Nothing is overwritten. A correction is a new entry, and the old one stays, so anyone can see how the matter got here.
• It records. It does not act. The SSoR does not pay an invoice or start a run. DSoR acts, and triggers start the work (Chapter 9).

The SSoR sits between two layers that it is easy to confuse it with.

• Memory is the worker's own continuity. It has no owner and no history. A case file belongs to the company, and every step in it can be traced.
• DSoR checks each action and acts. It reads the company's systems for business facts, such as whether an invoice is paid. The SSoR keeps the story of each matter: what happened, what it waits for, and why.

So the two hold different things about the same invoice. DSoR's evidence says what was done and under whose authority. The case file's evidence says what the worker saw and decided, and points at DSoR's line. When the system shows a fact the file does not have yet, the file is behind, and the next line records it. The file never outranks the fact. The case file does not have to be a separate file, either. If the accounting system keeps an activity log that follows the three rules, that log is the case file.

Thursday's failure shows how they work together. The worker marked invoice 5120 "approved by Dave" because an email said so. In the design this chapter draws, the approval itself is made in the accounting system, from Dave's own login, and DSoR checks for it before any payment (4.5). The case file is where the worker records what it saw and did, with the reason for each step in a line, such as "took the terms from the vendor record, not from memory", and where anyone reads where the invoice stands. The model's full reasoning is not a record. The run's transcript belongs to the runtime. One entry reads "October 15, 7:42 a.m. Email from a lookalike address claims Dave's approval. Flagged to Dave. Not an approval." The next reads "Waiting for Dave's approval of the run." A person or a worker who picks up the invoice tomorrow starts from those lines, not from a guess.

In a run at night, the case file gives the worker where the matter stands and what it waits for. At nine, it gives the person the story: what the run saw, did and left waiting. It is the handover between the two.

The payment run is a matter too, with a case file of its own. Its first line, written by the worker when it builds the run, lists the invoices and waits for Dave's approval of the run. Each invoice in it points to the run, and Dave's approval of the run lives in the run's file, not in each invoice's. Thursday's "approved by Dave" was an approval only the run could have.

An approval queue is every case file whose last line waits for a person. A draft reply to a vendor is a step in the matter's file, Dave's approval is DSoR's event, and the chat is only where he sees it.

Invoice 5120's case file, as the next person reads it.

In the governance rule (4.7), SSoR governs what a worker may take as true right now. For invoice 5120, that is the last line of its case file, not an email and not the worker's own note.

SSoR in this book. SSoR is at the idea stage. Panaversity has published its design as a proposal, with no specification or code yet.¹ In Part II you keep each matter's case file by hand: the worker types it at the end of each run, one file per matter in your lab folder, and you read it. Kept by hand, a case file has only your discipline. A line the worker adds says what it waits for and points to the approval in the system. It never says "approved". Part IV teaches SSoR in depth, in Chapter 34.