The Commitment Tracker

The register by which a body knows which of its shoulds and cans became wills — to whom, by when, and what became of each.

Work moves through five words. Could — it is possible. Should — it serves The Goal and its time is near. Can — nothing blocks it; it may start now. Will — a person has consciously chosen it, in their own words, with a by-when. Did — it is done, and the one who was owed has said so. Only the fourth word makes a Commitment. The Tracker is the instrument that holds the fourth and fifth where everyone concerned can see them.

Its register is one row per commitment that crosses the body's boundary: from whom · to whom · what · by when · when and how the will was chosen and by whom · what changes hands and where it lands · the state · the evidence. Beside it sits a second table, The Candidates table, for everything the work says should or can be done that nobody has yet chosen. The two are never merged, because the day a candidate is read as a promise is the day the register stops being trustworthy.

It is load-bearing because the seam between bodies is where work is actually lost. Inside one head, intention and action are the same motion; between two people they are two events with a gap, and the gap is invisible unless something holds it open. Most failures called coordination failures are simply promises that were understood differently, or never made at all, and discovered late. A register makes the gap a thing you can look at on a Tuesday (Networks of Commitments, The gap).

The paper floor is a page of rows and a will said out loud at the table; a Cell with a notebook has a complete Tracker. A screen form may write the same rows and show them sorted — what is coming in, what is owed, what stands between us — and shows nothing a person did not say. Changes are appended, never rewritten: a broken promise stays in the record beside its reason, because a register that can be tidied is a register that will be (Consciously Breaking Commitments, Kept as a share of made).

Also called: the Commitments register · could · should · can · will · did Stands on: Commitment · A word given is a word kept · SHOULD-CAN-WILL-DID · The Record Opens onto: The Candidates table · The states of a commitment · A WILL is never inferred · Networks of Commitments · The Pledge · Kept as a share of made · The Heartbeat In play: the table · Home — filled at the Turn, read whenever anyone asks what we owe Sources: Projects/The Kit 2026-09/The Commitment Tracker — Could · Should · Can · Will · Did (the Kit, v0) (draft; the page marks itself a proposal awaiting proofread) · Projects/The Kit 2026-09/The Minimum Standards of Interoperability…, the commitments row (draft) · Making And Securing Commitments, Networks of Commitments (wiki root; draft) · lionsberg.wiki: Commitment Open: Three state vocabularies for a commitment are live in the canon at once, and the Tracker's is only one of them (The states of a commitment). · Nothing states how a commitment between two Cells is held when the two registers disagree.