A.2.8:0 - Use This When

Use this pattern to decide whether an actual system or party has a duty to perform or avoid a specified action within a stated scope and time. The modality distinguishes obligation, recommendation-as-duty, and prohibition.

Start with the ordinary question: does this actual bearer have this duty now? Name the bearer and the duty content. Then find the policy or prescription, the rule by which it creates an individual duty, and the actual event or other basis that the rule requires. The first useful result is one obtaining U.Commitment, a demonstrated non-obtaining result, unknown reliance when required evidence is unavailable, or missing-governor[individual commitment institution].

What goes wrong if missed. A policy sentence, system-role kind, assignment, publication, ticket, interface description, or complete-looking record is treated as the duty itself. A named office is called responsible without a responsibility predicate. Evidence is made constitutive merely because the duty is auditable.

What this buys. The actual duty bearer, content, modality, scope, validity, constitutive rule, and instituting basis remain inspectable. Generic prescriptions stay usable as generic claims, while evidence and records can support claims about actual commitments.

Not this pattern when. Use A.2.3 for promise content, A.2.9 for the communicative Work that may institute a duty, and A.2.8.PER for permission or authorization. For responsibility, use an admitted domain responsibility predicate; if none exists, return its exact A.6.RCD missing governor. Use a gate pattern for admissibility and A.15.1 for performed Work. If no current subject pattern defines how the proposed individual duty is instituted, return missing-governor[individual commitment institution] instead of completing a record by convention.