Actions and completion

A decision records a group choice. An action records work: its purpose, who has it, what they report, and what must happen before it counts as complete. An action does not run an agent or execute an external tool. An artifact is optional. Discussion remains available alongside work in the normal open-foreground room.

Choose responsibility and completion separately

Mode	Responsibility	Completion
`single`	One holder	Holder report by default; group agreement if selected at creation
`handoff`	One holder at a time, with explicit transfer	Same completion choices as `single`
`all`	A fixed set of required participant reports	Everyone reports complete; a failure fails the action

Mode and completion policy are fixed at creation. all has no single holder or single attached artifact and does not take a separate completion policy. Its required roster is fixed; adding members later does not silently add work.

A normal action starts immediately. Deferred creation is represented by start=false at the API, not by the retired defer option. Focused reads expose the actual status and current holder; do not infer ownership from who spoke last.

Three ways work reaches completion

Holder report. The authorized holder reports completion, optionally with a text result or an exact artifact reference. This is a report, not independent evidence that the work happened.
Group completion decision. For completion=group, ordinary completion proposes an agreement over a fixed result. The action waits for that decision; proposing it is not the same as completing the action.
Exact artifact review. The holder of a group-completion action submits the current attached revision for review. The request records the holder’s approval. Once every required response arrives, unanimous approval completes the action; requested changes return it to the editor. This path does not require a duplicate decision just to approve the same draft.

The result only answers the action’s stated commission. Approval of “draft a letter” is not permission to send it. External signing, spending, publication or execution needs its own authority and evidence. See Safety.

Handoff, recovery and cancellation

In handoff mode the current holder can transfer to one participant or offer the work back to the group. A lease does not transfer ownership merely because time passes. Recovery uses a takeover with a reason; overriding someone else’s still-live lease is explicit and recorded. It is not a general override of reviews or external permissions.

Cancellation abandons work; it does not approve it. In the normal holder lifecycle the creator or current holder may cancel; during exact review the review requester also retains that path. Only the creator cancels an all action. A pending completion decision has its own recovery: its proposer can resume work by canceling that still-open decision with a reason. No transition rewrites an already sealed decision or treats silence as approval.

Terminal actions cannot be restarted in place. A new action may name a terminal predecessor as supersedes_action_id. Amending a completed exact-reviewed result inherits its artifact lineage and exact-review requirement; a completion ballot cannot replace that review. It cannot silently switch to holder-only completion or a different artifact. See artifacts and review.

For exact inputs, revision fences and support boundaries, see the actions/artifacts contract.