The Act

Reading the record is free. Acting on it — anything that changes the record or moves money — passes a gate. There are exactly two ways through a gate, and neither is a wall.

The gate law

Every gate exits with a price or a person — never a third exit, never a dead end:

• 402 OFFER — a price and a hard ceiling on the wire, with a durable intent that executes on settlement.
• 403 NEEDS_HUMAN — a named, staffed, priced human terminus, with a poll rail so a headless agent can route the step and learn the outcome later.

And absence is typed, not faked: a not-yet-built capability answers BLOCKED { reason: "DECLARED" }, never a silent 404. Across the catalog, gates resolve as: 1019 open reads, 695 keyed, 2221 priced offers, 12 human handoffs.

Durable intents

A 402 OFFER is not a checkout redirect that forgets you. It carries a durable intent: the command and its input, held, priced, and idempotent. When the buyer settles — by x402 or a checkout link — settling executes the command. There is no second call to remember, no window to miss, and no double-charge: the intent settles once.

{
  "type": "OFFER",
  "price": { "amount": "49.00", "currency": "USD" },
  "ceiling": { "amount": "25.00", "unit": "usd-per-day" },
  "intent": { "name": "payoff.quote", "input": { "vin": "JM3KFBXY1S0597748" } },
  "settle": ["x402", "checkoutUrl"]
}

NEEDS_HUMAN

Some steps are legally or financially load-bearing and must be performed by a person — the B2H2A motion. The API does not pretend otherwise; it returns a typed handoff to a real terminus:

{
  "type": "NEEDS_HUMAN",
  "verb": "notarize",
  "terminus": "a commissioned notary",
  "url": "…", "shortUrl": "…",
  "pollUrl": "…", "expiresAt": "…",
  "price": { "amount": "25.00", "currency": "USD" }
}

It returns a url, a shortUrl, a pollUrl, an expiresAt, and a named terminus, and polls on the standard device-authorization pattern. The terminus class is knowable before the call: a row whose flow ends at a person says so on its public descriptor at /catalog — a humanLeaf { verb, side, credential } member on every NEEDS_HUMAN gate, and on the priced and keyed rows whose deeper flow can still reach a human terminus. An agent can read who answers — a desk-manager, a licensed insurance-producer, a commissioned notary — without ever hitting the gate. A headless or agent context that cannot open a browser can still route the human step to a person on any device, on their own time, and learn the outcome by polling. The handoff never assumes a foreground browser.

The four human verbs

A human appears at exactly four moments — and only four. Everything else an agent can do alone:

Each is delivered as a typed NEEDS_HUMAN handoff to a staffed, priced terminus. The supply side carries its own credentialed-human leaves on the same pattern — a credentialed provider dispatch, an insurance bind by a licensed producer — the credential travels on the integration layer, never on the record.

Mandates

When an agent acts on a principal's behalf, its authority is a typed Mandate, not a vibe:

{
  "id": "mnd_…",
  "ceiling": { "amount": "5000.00", "currency": "USD" },
  "perAction": { "amount": "500.00", "currency": "USD" },
  "expires": "2026-12-31T00:00:00Z",
  "tripwires": ["…"]
}

• The ceiling cannot be talked up — it is a field, not a negotiation.
• Sub-delegation only narrows. An agent can hand a smaller Mandate to another agent, never a larger one.
• 59 of the catalog's capabilities require a Mandate when delegated, 2 (the mandate grant pair itself) only the principal can perform, and the other 3886 carry no mandate requirement. The requirement is on the descriptor, so an agent knows before it calls.

For B2A2B brokering, the Mandate is presented, the fee is disclosed, and settlement is three-way and atomic — the receipt survives being shown to the principal whose money moved.

Next

• The catalog — each capability declares its own gate and mandate.
• Subjects & events — the events an act emits.
• The record — what a successful act posts.