A property system for tacit skill.
Tacit means the part you cannot write down: not the procedure, which is in the manual, but the feel. Where you slow, how you load it, what you do when the job is not what the drawing said it would be.
Everything else is machinery around these.
| The object | What it is | Whose it is |
|---|---|---|
| The session | The raw record of a person working: what their hands did, what the machine did back, and what they were looking at when they acted | Theirs. Information about an identifiable person, held under licence, withdrawn at will |
| The built thing | What a machine or a model actually runs, made away from the machine, from sessions that pass the admission checks | Ours. Our instrument, our work, our checking |
| The consent | Which agreements are live for this session, checked at the moment of recording rather than assumed from a file | Separable. Given one at a time and withdrawn one at a time |
| The count | Hours in use, written at the moment a person chooses whose way of working is running | The basis of payment, and a right to an accounting |
From a day's work to a paid hour.
- 01Asked for by nameSomebody who has seen the person work asks for them by name. Nobody is picked from a ranking.
- 02Recorded, nothing connectedThe person runs the machine as they always have. The recorder watches from outside it, wired to nothing, and a photograph of that state goes into the record.
- 03Admitted or refusedWe run the record through a written procedure before anyone learns from it. It is admitted, or refused with the reason named: a field missing, a consent that was not live, a set-up that cannot be shown.
- 04Built off the machineWe build a way of working from admitted records only, and we do it away from the machine. What reaches a machine is a release, and a named person signs it.
- 05Chosen by a personBefore a job, a person on the crew picks whose way of working runs, by name. Their own name goes on the choice, and no way of working runs until it is made.
- 06Counted from the choiceThat choice starts the count. The hours are written from that moment, on the record that already carries the name of the person who chose, so the count and the clearance cannot be pulled apart.
- 07Paid, free to endThe person whose way of working it is sees the count as it is written and is paid for those hours. They can end it on notice, and ending it costs them nothing.
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.
No default and no last-used. A machine that picks up yesterday's choice on its own has moved on nobody's authority. Choosing is an act, not a setting.
What it is often taken for, and is not.
It is not a robot
Even Steven makes nothing that moves. It is the agreement, the register and the count that sit underneath somebody else's machine.
It is not a staffing agency
You are not hiring a person for the day and nobody is sent to your site. What is licensed is a way of working, and a person on your own crew still says go.
It is not a scoreboard
Nothing here grades how somebody works. The checks are about equipment and paperwork. Whether a recording is good enough to learn from is a bar somebody has to set, and until it is set no page here pretends to judge it.
It is not a sale
We never acquire a person's technique. It stays in their hands and their career whatever any paper says, and an instrument that took it outright would destroy the reason to keep paying them.
A way of working proposes. It never authorizes.
A technique that has been loaded has no authority of its own. Nothing moves because a way of working was loaded.
It sits at the bottom
Hard safety limits outrank every person, and every person outranks the software. A way of working is software.
Loaded is not cleared
Fitted and ready are states a machine can reach on its own. Cleared to work is a person's word, given on the day.
Nothing is learned on the machine
The learning happens away from it. Nothing crosses but a release with a named person's signature on it.