SHOULD-CAN-WILL-DID

The states a piece of work passes through: it should be done now, it can be done because nothing blocks it, someone says they will, and then it was — or was not, and the gap is what teaches.

Should is what the plan says: work on a chain to a Milestone, pulled backward from the end. Can is should plus constraint-free: every predecessor complete, every open condition closed, which is what The look-ahead and Make-Ready Process make true. Will is a Commitment — a person's word, spoken at the table to someone who depends on it. Did is what happened, written in The Record.

Before should the cycle widens by one: could — the pool of everything a living body might do that is on no chain to any marker. It is real, it is kept, it is not required now, and naming it as a place rather than a failure is what keeps the possible from crowding the week. So the stages are five, and only two of them are anyone's word: the first three are computed from the plan, the last two are spoken by the one who does the work.

It is load-bearing because it is the one path by which an intention becomes a result without anyone being commanded. Each arrow is a different body's move: the plan draws could into should, an owner clears constraints to make should into can, the doer turns can into will at The Heartbeat, and the record turns will into did. Skip a stage and the failure is predictable — promising what is not ready, or doing what nothing needed.

Also called: The cycle · could → should → can → will → did Stands on: Pull planning · The look-ahead · Networks of Commitments · Last Planner System Opens onto: Commitment · The gap · Kept as a share of made · The Record In play: table · Home Sources: Could, Should, Can, Will, Did (wiki term page, drafted, unreviewed — the canon's four widened by could) · The LIØNSBERG Pattern Language — Synthesized (Element 11) · The LIØNSBERG Operating System (book, draft v0) §11 · The DNA of Heaven, Part VII — lionsberg.wiki page name: Could, Should, Can, Will, Did Open: The Pattern Language names four stages; the seed and the term page carry five. A WILL is a person's word, consciously given, and is never inferred from a plan.