Built for the person the crew asks for by name.

On this pageIn a crew's wordsThe four objectsTacitThe sequenceOne actThe shapeThe wordsTwo ownersWhat it is notThe lineShort answers

What that means, said the way you would say it.

Two words carry most of this site, tacit and property. Take them one at a time and they come apart into things you already know.

Tacit skill is the part of your trade that never made it onto a page. Nobody taught it to you out of a book and you could not put it in one. It is the reason a crew asks for one person by name on the wet job and takes whoever is free on the dry one. It does not have to be the best in the country to be worth keeping. It has to be yours, and it is.

Property, here, starts with you. You own your skill in the way the shop means it. It is in you, it goes where you go, and nothing here takes it, buys it, moves it or learns it out of you. What it is not is a paper claim, because no paper anywhere makes a way of doing a job into property, for you or for anyone. What the word adds is that the recording of you working is treated as yours as well. You decide whether it is made. Your name stays on it. You are paid a share for every hour it is in use. You can take it back on notice, and taking it back costs you nothing. None of that rests on a paper claim to own a technique, because the law protects a thing that was made and never a way of doing it, by you or by anyone. The recording is information about you, and the pay is written into the agreement. The section on two owners, further down this page, says where the right comes from.

Two words carry most of the weight on this site, so here they are in plain terms before they start turning up. The instrument is what Even Steven is: the agreement, the roster and the pay that sit underneath somebody else's machine. A way of working is what gets licensed: your own way of running a machine, once it has been recorded, admitted and built, held under your name and counted by the hour. Licensed, and never sold. The skill it came from stays yours, and what we build from the record of it is a tool: it runs under your name, on your licence, it pays you every hour it works, and it stops when you say.

Where it starts

It starts in your cab, on the controls your machine already has.

The kit sits on the sticks, the pedals and the wheel that are there already. It comes to you in a case and goes back in it, it runs on its own battery, and nothing is cut, tapped or plugged into the machine. You fit it after the walk-around, it is photographed on and photographed off, and it comes off at the end of the day and leaves no mark.

You press start and you press stop. Nobody from us is in the cab, and the controls have to feel the same to you before a recording happens at all.

How it is captured

What can be written down, and what cannot.

The manual carries the procedure. You carry the rest, and the rest is what this is for.

The difference

Anyone can read the manual, and the crew still asks for one person by name.

How to start the machine, the order of the checks, the reach of the boom, the settings for the ground you expect: all of it is in the manual, and anyone can read it. A person who has read it can sit in the seat. They are not yet the person a crew asks for by name.

The one who is asked for has something the manual does not carry. Where they slow, how they load it, what they do when the job is not what the drawing said it would be. Nobody taught it to them from a page and they could not put it on one. It shows on the ground and nowhere else.

One page on this site shows the thing instead of naming it. On the excavator page the cycle is dig, lift, swing, dump, return, five moves anybody learns in a week, and the technique lives in the joins between them and in the pass where the ground stops doing what it did last time. A bottom you cannot see. Ground that carried the machine this morning and will not carry it after lunch. A face that is not the drawing. What that page spends its length demonstrating is what this page calls tacit, and what both of them call a way of working once it has been recorded, admitted and built.

One act does two jobs, and neither was designed around the other.

Before anything runs, somebody chooses whose way of working is in it: the basics it came with, the way an owner's own operator taught it, or a specialist hired by name. A person picks, and the choice is written down with their name on it.

That single act is the human authorization the machine may not move without, and it is the start of the count that pays the person whose way of working was chosen. The clearance and the invoice come from the same record, which means neither can be quietly adjusted without the other.

On the morning of a job it looks like nothing at all. A person on the crew walks the machine round, chooses by name whose way of working runs, and puts their own name beside the choice. The machine will not move under anybody's way of working until that happens, and from the moment it does, the hours start counting for the person whose name was chosen.

The words on this site, and what each one means here.

The same words, in the same sense, on every page. Each one starts with what it means on the day, and then says it the careful way. Where a word carries a promise, the promise is written on the covenant and the word points to it.

The instrumentwhat we are

The paperwork and the counting, and nothing that moves. Even Steven is the agreement, the roster and the pay that sit underneath somebody else's machine. Not a machine, not a part for one, and not a person sent to your site.

The sessionours, for you

The recording of one person working, from the moment they press start to the moment they press stop. One recording of a person working, with its own name and its own seal, which the site calls its identifier and its signature, so it counts itself rather than being counted for you. It carries what their hands did, what the machine did back, and what they were looking at when they acted, on one clock, in one signed chain, with a photograph of the disconnected state inside it. Information about an identifiable person. What is made of your skill is ours, for you, and the permission under it is yours to end.

The built thingthe tool we make

The tool we make out of your admitted recordings, and the thing a machine is actually given. What a machine or a model runs, made away from the machine, from sessions that pass the admission checks. We make it, we check it and we answer for it, and it runs under your name, on your licence, for as long as you allow. It never crosses to a machine on its own: what reaches a machine is a release, and a named person signs it.

The consentseparable

Your yes, and there is more than one of them. Which agreements are live for this session, checked at the moment of recording rather than assumed from a file. Four of them: to be recorded at all, to be combined with others, to run under your name, and to be used to train a model. Given one at a time and withdrawn one at a time, so you can say yes to one and no to another and the no is honoured without emptying anything else. A record used to train a model is a different thing, and it is asked for on its own. Machines that learn

The countthe basis of payment

The hours, written down as they happen. Hours in use, written at the moment a person chooses whose way of working is running. Kept in sessions, on the record that shows who cleared the work. Read by the person being paid and by the person paying, and it is the same record for each.

A way of workingwhat is licensed

Your own way of running a machine, once it has been recorded, admitted and built. This site's name for your tacit skill after it has been through those three steps. How a named person works a family of machine, built from their admitted sessions and released under their name. Licensed, never sold, and the skill it came from stays yours. It proposes what an experienced person would do next, and it does nothing until a person has said go. It is software, and it sits at the bottom of the order of authority.

The seatwhere the person is

Where you sit, and what you work the machine with. The levers, the pedals, the wheel. The person in the seat is the one who is asked before a recording, the one who says yes or no to each agreement, and the one the protections belong to, whoever arranged the recording.

The passone run of the work

One run through the work, the way the word is used on any site. Whose way of working runs is chosen by name before it. A job already underway finishes when notice arrives, because stopping a machine mid-pass is its own hazard.

The family of machinewhat it was taught on

A kind of machine rather than a model number. The kind of machine a way of working was taught on, and the one kind it is licensed for. Nothing is offered for a machine it was not taught on, and an owner finds a way of working in the repository by the family they run.

Admittedthrough the procedure

It came through the checks and can be built from. A session that has come through the written procedure with none of the refusals against it. Only admitted sessions go into a built thing, and the procedure is about equipment and paperwork, never about how well anyone worked.

Refusedwith the reason named

It did not come through, and you are told which box was empty. A session that did not come through, with the reason named: a field missing, a consent that was not live, a set-up that cannot be shown. Refused is not a criticism of you. A refused session is kept rather than thrown away, and the reason travels with it.

Releasedsigned by a named person

Somebody put their name to it so it could go out to a machine. A way of working that a named person has signed for, so that it may reach a machine. Nothing else crosses from us to a machine, and the record of what went into it is kept from the first day rather than assembled when somebody asks.

Loadedthe machine's state

It is on the machine, and nobody has told it to do anything. A way of working that is on the machine and could run. Nobody has told it to. A way of working that is loaded is a way of working that is waiting to be chosen, and it can wait all day.

Cleareda person's word

Somebody said go, on the day. Cleared to work is a person's word, given on the day. A person has walked around the machine, started it, chosen by name whose way of working runs, and said go. Loaded is not cleared, and a machine cannot give it to itself.

The clearancethe same act as the count

The moment a person picks your name for the job and writes their own name beside it. The human authorization the machine may not move without: a person on the crew choosing, by name, whose way of working runs, with their own name on the choice. The count starts from the same act, so the clearance and the invoice come from the same record and neither can be adjusted without the other.

The repositoryour door on the register, and the store front

Where a way of working is kept, and the counter an owner comes to. Even Steven's door on the Tacit Tessera register, where a named way of working is entered under the name of the person it came from, and the store front where an owner finds one by the family of machine and licenses it by name for a job. The person whose way of working it is opens their own record there, and sees the same hours the owner sees.

Withdrawalfree, on notice

You give notice, and it comes out of service. Notice given by the person whose way of working it is. From the day it arrives, no new job starts under it. A job already underway finishes, and nothing starts after it. No penalty, no clawback, no fee for walking away. After you, the way out passes to your estate with the licence and the pay, for as long as the licence runs. That position is ruled, and counsel is writing the clause.

The true datebackups included

The day the last copy is gone. The day every copy is gone, backups included. Deleting every copy takes longer than taking a way of working out of service, so you are told both dates, and the later one is the one that means every copy.