A WILL is never inferred

A commitment exists only where a person consciously chose it, in their own words. One recorded without that choosing is an error of the record, and is struck rather than kept.

The rule sounds procedural and is not. A plan may show that something must happen. A role may make it obvious who would do it. A schedule may already depend on it. None of these is a promise, and none of them may be written into the register as one. The will is a distinct act by a distinct person: said aloud at the table, written in their own hand, or spoken in their own voice — with a by-when they chose.

It is load-bearing because it is where a system of commitments either respects sovereignty or quietly abolishes it. Every organisation that has ever ground people down did so through inferred obligation: it was in the plan, it was your area, everyone assumed, surely you understood. Under that regime a person's word stops meaning anything, because the record fills with things they never said, and they learn that agreeing and being assigned feel identical from the inside. The rule is the structural refusal of that (Sovereignty, Consent, Dignity).

It also protects the record's usefulness in the other direction. A register holding only chosen wills is a register whose numbers mean something — Kept as a share of made measures a body's reliability only if everything in the denominator was actually promised. Mix in inferences and the measure becomes a measure of how optimistic the planner was, and the body will respond by promising less rather than by keeping more.

The remedy when it is broken is deliberately blunt: the row is struck, not corrected, not softened, not left standing with an apology. Striking it is cheap; leaving it teaches everyone that the register can contain things nobody said. And the honest replacement is easy — move it to The Candidates table, where a thing that should be done can sit in full view until someone chooses it.

Also called: no commitment without a chosen will Stands on: Sovereignty · Consent · Commitment · A word given is a word kept Opens onto: The Commitment Tracker · The Candidates table · The states of a commitment · The Pledge · Kept as a share of made · Mutual Consent In play: the table — every time a promise is written down Sources: Projects/The Kit 2026-09/The Commitment Tracker — Could · Should · Can · Will · Did (the Kit, v0), §The law (draft) · Making And Securing Commitments (wiki root; draft) · The DNA of Heaven, Part VII (Fable synthesis — the will as the one act that makes a commitment) · lionsberg.wiki: Commitment Open: An agent may hold a person's calendar, draft their words, and carry their promise — but nothing in the canon states how an agent records a will on its person's behalf without the recording itself becoming the inference the rule forbids.