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AI Field Guide

CS-09 · Preserve What Is Known and What Remains Owed

Proposed governing text · 0.2.0-review

Aliases: settlement; receipt; pending; unknown; timeout; lost acknowledgement; retry; recovery; cancellation; outbox.

Name the particular effect: local intent recorded, source request accepted, source effect applied, observation recorded, or independently verified result. A known pending operation is different from an unknown outcome. A failed view refresh does not erase a known successful mutation. Successfully recording a business rejection is different from refusing the requested review.

A timeout may leave an effect unknown. A denied recovery request does not prove the original operation was refused. Retain its identity and permitted reconciliation path. No universal four-way return type is required: a genuinely total operation can remain total, while an external effect must expose its actual uncertainty.

Outstanding work needs an actual owner and a survival mechanism for the boundary claimed. Dropping a follow-up, cancelling a worker or retiring a new-work entrance does not automatically cancel an obligation. Local ownership is not crash durability, source truth or distributed exactly-once execution. Stored intent, appropriate transactions, source idempotency, claims and fencing earn their place when the story requires them.

Related: CS-06, CS-08, CS-10, CS-12.

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