Committee

The one who depends on a promise — who secured it, and who stands jointly answerable for what happens if it is not kept.

Every promise has two sides: one who gives the word and one who leans on it. This is the second side, and the word here means nothing like the ordinary committee of chairs and agendas. It can be a single person. It is defined entirely by depending on one commitment (Committor).

The joint responsibility is the load-bearing part and the part most bodies never write down. Whoever accepts and relies on a promise is prepared to accept the reasonable consequences if it is not performed — and in a body that does not assign blame, they are jointly responsible for not having secured or leaned upon an unreliable promise in the first place. A person who keeps depending on a word that keeps not holding shares in the miss (Zero Blame Environment, Discernment, Trust).

It is load-bearing because it makes receiving a skill rather than a passive state. It asks the receiver to check that the conditions of satisfaction were clear, that the one promising was actually free to promise, that the timing was honestly blocked out — before leaning. That check is what turns a network of promises into something a body can plan on (Conditions of satisfaction, Networks of Commitments, Pull planning).

And it holds the closing word. A promise is delivered by the one who made it and closed by the one who received it, at the handoff, against the conditions both agreed. Only the receiver can say it landed. That asymmetry is what stops a body from producing confidently in a direction nobody wanted (The states of a commitment, The Life of a Commitment).

Like its twin, it names a facing and not a person: whoever depends on one promise this week may be the one giving a word on another.

Also called: the one who depends on the word Stands on: Commitment · Committor · Conditions of satisfaction Opens onto: The Life of a Commitment · The states of a commitment · Networks of Commitments · Witness · Trust · Zero Blame Environment · Meta Game In play: the table — whoever's own plan leans on someone else's I will Sources: Projects/the term pages/Committee.md (draft, unreviewed) · Making And Securing Commitments (wiki root; the eighth element, quoted there in full) · Meta Game (wiki root — the pair at the scale of a package of work) · lionsberg.wiki: Making And Securing Commitments Open: The word collides squarely with everyday English and has to be glossed at every use; the canon carries a standing committee as a title with nothing written behind it, so the live collision is with ordinary speech rather than with another defined sense.