docs / reference / standings & receipts

Standings & receipts.

Every decision carries a standing: whether a person has ruled on it, and how. You see it in words wherever a decision surfaces for an agent to read, and on the near-match candidates in your ruling queues. balladeer recent, the feed of what was just written, shows the stored token instead (accepted for a decision a human confirmed), as does the full record from balladeer decision. What each standing means:

confirmed by a human

Someone on your team reviewed this and made it the team's call. Agents treat it as binding unless you explicitly override it.

unconfirmed (machine-captured, awaiting confirmation)

An agent recorded it from real work and no person has ruled yet. Agents weigh it as context, not law. Ruling on it is one command.

superseded

A later decision replaced this one. It stays in the record with its story, and it arrives marked with the replacement attached ("REPLACED BY", with the living decision's claim), so nobody builds on it by accident. This holds even before the replacement's paperwork settles: the marking follows the recorded supersedes link itself, not a bookkeeping field that can lag it.

dismissed as a capture error

Someone ruled that the capture was wrong from the start, so it permanently leaves retrieval and never reaches an agent again. This is the fork worth getting right: dismissal is for something that should never have been recorded, while a decision that was true and has since been overtaken is superseded instead, so it stays findable with its story.

corroborated by use

Receipts, not a score: merged PRs that cite it, execution proofs, and how recently it was load-bearing ("2 merged PRs cite it, last 7d ago"). It always names the evidence, so "says who?" has an answer. Standings and receipts carry no number. The one figure you may meet is on a held proposal's near-match line, where a candidate can read "unconfirmed, confidence 0.62": that is the capture's own uncalibrated confidence in what it recorded, not a rating of the decision.

A proposal can also stop short of your memory altogether. When an agent records something close to decisions you already have, Balladeer holds it for placement rather than writing a near-duplicate: it reads "HELD, not in the graph", your status line counts it as awaiting placement, and it enters your team's memory only once someone rules on where it belongs. Resolving a hold is one ruling.

Acceptance criteria are receipts of a different kind, and they sit beside standing rather than inside it. Each one is a line the person the work was for signs off (balladeer accept), each carries its own state of open or met, and a decision can be fully built with a criterion still unsigned. Signing changes nothing about the decision's standing: a confirmed decision stays confirmed, and an unconfirmed one is not promoted by a signature.

Related warnings you may see on a decision: "sources disagree" means two decisions in your team's memory give incompatible accounts. balladeer conflicts lists each live pair side by side; the conflict resolves when your team dismisses or supersedes the losing side, or retracts the link if the two do not actually disagree. "replacement pending" means an unconfirmed decision proposes to supersede this one. The decision still stands (an unconfirmed challenger demotes nothing), but both sides surface together, with the challenger's claim named, until someone on your team confirms the replacement or dismisses the challenger.

A decision your team recorded as a hard rule carries a firmness marker too. "⛔ MUST — uncrossable" means the rule has standing (a person confirmed it, or use corroborated it), and an agent whose work would cross it stops, asks you, and only then proposes an exception citing it; a carve-out shown alongside that fits the case lifts the pause. "● MUST (unvouched)" is the same rule before it has standing: still firm, but an agent may proceed on your nod rather than a hard stop, and the deviation is recorded either way.

Verified from live product as of 28 jul 2026.