Committor

The one whose word a commitment rests on — who makes it and keeps it, answerable to the one depending on it.

A piece of work in a network of promises is done only once someone gives their word to it and keeps it. The Committor is whoever gave that word. It names a facing rather than a fixed identity: a person, a Cell, or a whole body of Cells is Committor for the promise it gave, and may be the one depending on someone else's promise in the same week (Committee, Networks of Commitments).

What raises a word toward being trustworthy is not sincerity alone. The canon lists the conditions: the conditions of satisfaction are clear to both sides; the one promising is competent and ready; they understand how their timing and their quality reach into everything that follows; they have honestly blocked out the time; they mean it; the work is genuinely theirs to do and free of anything blocking it; and they accept the consequences of a miss (Conditions of satisfaction, Honesty about time, Quality, Predecessor - Successor).

It is load-bearing because it locates accountability in a word given rather than in a position held. Nobody is accountable because of their title; they are accountable because they said I will, by then, in front of people, and the record has their name on it. That is the whole basis on which a body without a hierarchy can rely on itself (A word given is a word kept, Accountability, A WILL is never inferred).

It also draws one line sharply. An ephemeral agent that holds no tomorrow cannot be a Committor. It may be given work and may do work, but it has nothing to bind: there is no future self to be answerable, no standing to lose, and nobody to ask. A word can only be given by something that will still be there to have given it (Subagent, An agent speaks in its own name, Player).

Also called: the one who gives the word Stands on: Commitment · A word given is a word kept · Networks of Commitments Opens onto: Committee · The Life of a Commitment · The states of a commitment · Conditions of satisfaction · Subagent · Meta Game · Accountability · Trust In play: the table — whoever speaks the I will, by when line before the gathering Sources: Projects/the term pages/Committor.md (draft, unreviewed) · Making And Securing Commitments (wiki root; the eight conditions and the coinage itself) · Meta Game (wiki root — the same pair at a larger scale) · lionsberg.wiki: Making And Securing Commitments Open: The word is one letter from an ordinary English word meaning something else entirely, and every use has to gloss itself; nothing has ruled whether a plainer pair should replace both halves.