The Candidates table

What the work says should or can be done, and nobody has chosen — a view, never a promise.

Beside the register of commitments stands a second table, and the wall between them is the point of both. The register holds only what a person consciously said they will do. The Candidates table holds everything else the body can see: the tasks a plan implies, the openings a Quest creates, the things that are clearly next and have no name against them. It is honest about being a list of possibilities.

It is load-bearing because without it the register is under constant pressure to swell. Everyone can see the work; somebody has to be able to write it down; and if the only place to write it is the promise register, then implications quietly become obligations and people find themselves owing things they never agreed to. A separate table lets a body be completely frank about what needs doing without anyone being conscripted by the writing of it (A WILL is never inferred, Sovereignty).

It is also where choosing happens. A candidate becomes a commitment by one act and one only: a person reads it, chooses it, and says so in their own words with a by-when. At that moment the row moves across into the register with their name on it. Nothing moves the other way by itself, and nothing on the candidates side ages into a duty (Requests and offers, The Board).

Reading it is a distinct skill. A long Candidates table is not a backlog of failure; it is the body seeing clearly. What it measures is opportunity, not debt, and the wise use of it at a Turn is to ask which two or three things actually serve the next stretch of road — not to feel behind by the length of a list (Critical Path, Float, Pull planning).

Also called: candidates · the second table Stands on: The Commitment Tracker · A WILL is never inferred · Sovereignty Opens onto: Commitment · The Board · Requests and offers · Pull planning · Critical Path · Work In Progress In play: the table — read at the Turn, when the next week's wills are chosen Sources: Projects/The Kit 2026-09/The Commitment Tracker — Could · Should · Can · Will · Did (the Kit, v0), §The tool (draft) · lionsberg.wiki: Commitment Open: Nothing says who may add a candidate, whether one expires, or how a body keeps the table from becoming the place work goes to be forgotten politely.