A.6.C:4.1 — Four questions for contract-like boundary wording

When “contract”, “guarantee”, “promise”, “SLA”, or “interface agreement” leaves a consequential ambiguity, ask only the live questions below. A question may yield zero, one, or several atomic claims. Add corresponding rows only when stable reuse, decision, audit, dispute, or cross-face projection needs the Claim Register; the question itself is not a bundle part or direct-object kind.

1. What was promised?

   • The promised value or effect (the promise content) in the intended scope.
   • In FPF terms (A.2.3), U.PromiseContent is promise content—a promise content, not an execution event (U.Work) and not, by itself, an obtaining individual deontic relation (U.Commitment).
   • Prose head rule (normative). When referring to U.PromiseContent in normative prose, authors SHALL use the head phrase promise content (or service offering clause or service promise clause) and SHALL NOT rely on the bare head noun service. If the surrounding text also talks about endpoints, systems, and operations, apply A.6.P:4.11a only when the current relied-on use still hides which concrete subject or relation is meant; examples include a service access point, service delivery system, or service-delivery Work occurrence. Mere proximity to those words creates no additional claim or recovery duty.
   • Recommendation: when commitments, gates, evidence, or MVPK faces need stable citation of the promise content, give it a stable local ID (e.g., SVC-*) to prevent paraphrase drift.
   • Claim-classification discipline: keep meanings and definitions of the promised behavior in L. A generic prescription about that behavior is a separate D claim about its exact normative source and applicable rule content. If an actual System or separately governed party has that duty, state a separate D claim about the exact U.Commitment, plus any A-* and E-* references needed by that claim.

2. What was said, published, or instituted?

   • Speech-act Work: if the boundary decision depends on who stated, published, or approved something, identify that exact A.2.9 U.SpeechAct <: U.Work occurrence.
   • Description/publication: identify the versioned utterance epistemes separately from their publication occurrences, forms, renderings, and carriers. None is the speech act.
   • A speech act may institute or update a commitment or strong grant only when the exact context policy recognizes that act type and the subject pattern’s obtaining conditions are met.
   • The published utterance descriptions (signature or mechanism descriptions plus MVPK faces) carry L/A/D/E-classified claims. The act is not “the contract”; it is the Work occurrence that created or updated those descriptions and may have a separately governed institutional effect.
   • World-side obtaining rule (normative). The predicates defined in A.2.8 and the cited context policy decide whether a commitment obtains; the predicate defined in A.2.8.PER together with that policy decides whether a strong grant obtains. For a commitment, use the actual instituting basis required by its constitutive rule: the current A.2.9 path uses an actual U.SpeechAct; another basis requires a subject pattern that admits it and gives its occurrence rule. A strong grant requires the actual instituting speech act under A.2.8.PER. Preserve the participants, scope/window, current policy, and any revocation or supersession conditions. A Claim Register row, utterance description, publication, carrier, or identifier creates or proves neither relation by itself. For a commitment, a cited fact is constitutive only when the identified rule makes that fact current and the pattern for that subject supplies its test. Publication or approval may establish a publication/status relation only through that relation’s exact predicate and obtaining facts.
   • Representation and reliance rule (normative). The model MAY assert or rely on a commitment or grant only through a separate atomic claim that identifies the exact U.Commitment or GrantedPermissionRelation@Context occurrence and cites its exact predicate, SubjectPatternLocator, participants, scope/window, and the currentness or evidence required by that use. For a commitment, cite the rule-required actual instituting basis and policy; for a strong grant, cite the actual instituting speech act and policy. Never infer the relation from Publish/Approve wording, a document, carrier, or completed-looking record alone.

3. What governance or permission-looking claim exists?

   • A generic prescription states what one exact policy or other normative episteme requires; it does not create an individual duty bearer or commitment occurrence. A claim that one actual System or separately governed party has that duty instead cites one separately obtaining A.2.8 U.Commitment. Here the normative episteme may be a contract, SLA, protocol, or policy, and the generic claim also states where its rule applies.
   • When the model asserts or relies on an individual obligation, recommendation-as-duty, or prohibition, write a separate atomic D claim whose direct object is that exact separately obtaining U.Commitment.
   • For permission-looking wording, select one A.6 A6-AW-* row. Only A6-AW-NORM-GRANT enters D. Within A6-AW-GATE, a mechanism entry predicate enters A and an actual A.21 GateDecisionResult enters E; split them into separate atomic claims when both are present. Exercise, weak evaluation, conflict, and observed-source claims enter E when their closing facts are present. Classification under A.2.8.PER alone selects no quadrant.
   • Individual-commitment checklist (use only for the individual branch):
     • identify one exact U.Commitment occurrence and the separate D-claim or CommitmentAssertion about it;
     • select exactly one actual bearer branch: an admitted U.System or separately governed party;
     • name non-empty exact duty referents, any actual counterparties, normalized modality, scope, and validity window;
     • cite the exact current constitutive policy, its individualizing rule, and the actual instituting basis required by that rule;
     • cite a system-role assignment only when that rule uses the assignment as an applicability ground—the assignment is neither bearer nor duty; and
     • add evidence-claim or carrier references only when the receiving reliance or adjudication needs them.
   • Permission-branch pointer: cite the selected A6-AW-* row, its exact A.2.8.PER object when applicable, and that atomic claim’s quadrant. Preserve the object’s own schema, participants, and references; do not reuse the commitment checklist.
   • A commitment is not “the spec text”: an utterance description carries the statement, while U.Commitment is the separately obtaining relation described by that statement (A.7 and A.2.8).

4. What happened, what followed, and what supports reliance?

   • Work: For one exact dated W : U.Work, recover each exact actual performer through A.13 and let A.15.1 independently admit the occurrence from that performer, enacted Method, extent, and containing System. Add an exact A.2.1 assignment reference and F.6 only when this account or a receiving use expressly consumes precise assignment-bound attribution through the same obtaining A.13 assignment; F.6 identifies neither the assignment nor the performer, and missing or failed F.6 leaves the Work intact.
   • Result or consequence: only when the sentence asks for one, select the matching A.15.1:4.6 row—an A.6.1 application/result binding or independently obtaining WorkResultRelation, A.15.PROD production branch, A.3.4 change, evaluation result, subject-specific delivery/transfer relation, or acceptance relation. An absent row stays absent.
   • Evidence: only when a receiving use relies on Work or one of those consequences, state an A.10 claim-bound evidence path and carrier.