| case | One bounded continuing Work situation organized around an exact subject, state, commitments, evidence, authority, and permissible next Work. It is not its file, ticket, queue position, or every Work item within it. |
| case subject | The patient, incident, user issue, release candidate, service relation, request, physical item, or other exact subject around which continuation is being coordinated. |
| case-state claim | A qualified claim about the case subject and relevant relations at a stated time or horizon. It changes only from adequate evidence. |
| exception | A fact or condition for which the standard continuation branch is absent, contradicted, no longer adequate, or requires bounded choice or return. It is not automatically an error or rare event. |
| matching admission and permission | The applicable case admission and independently supported current permission for the same matter, effective conditions, configuration, and horizon. A valid OPS.5 result may carry both; admission alone is not permission. |
| deciding System | The System authorized to select or confirm the next permissible Work. It may differ from the responsible performer. |
| responsible performer | The System assigned and capable for the selected Work under its conditions. Assignment, capability, permission, authority, and performance remain distinct. |
| next permissible Work | The exact Work that may occur next under the applicable domain Method, permission, obligations, evidence, and stop conditions. A task description or tool call alone does not show that this Work was performed. |
| action choice | A selected next Work, probe, fallback, stop, or return. Choice does not perform the Work or progress the case. |
| Work occurrence | Dated performance admitted from direct evidence under the relevant configuration. Intention, assignment, invocation, trace presence, or artifact creation does not establish it alone. |
| evidence expected from performance | The observations, produced results, or records needed to judge what occurred. State the claim each supports, including any claim of a changed subject state or a failure. |
| record update | A change to a ticket, case file, plan, model, trace, database, or dashboard. It may carry evidence but is not the case-state change by itself. |
| unmet condition | The exact missing, stale, contradicted, unauthorized, unsafe, unsupported, or unavailable condition that prevents a truthful next action or progressed state, together with its return or stop. |
| progression result | Either an evidenced progressed case state with its next return, or an unmet-condition return with owner, fallback or stop, and retry condition. |