The states of a commitment

Open → delivered → kept · returned · released · broken. Appended, never rewritten.

A promise has a life, and the words for its stages have to be few enough to say at a table and exact enough to mean the same thing in two bodies. Open — the will was chosen and the by-when has not come. Delivered — the one who promised says it is done. Kept — the one who was owed says so, which is the only word that closes it. Returned — sent back, with why, because what arrived was not what was needed. Released — the one who was owed lets it go. Broken — it was not kept, said plainly, with the gap learned from.

The asymmetry between delivered and kept is the whole discipline. A promise is made to someone, so it is finished by someone: the committor's word opens and delivers, the receiver's word closes. A body where doing and closing are the same act has no way to discover that its work was not what anyone wanted, and will keep producing confidently in the wrong direction (Committor, Committee, Conditions of satisfaction).

Broken is a state and not a verdict. It is written because it is true, and because a body that cannot say the word will instead quietly redefine what was promised until it looks kept. What follows a broken commitment is the learning of the gap, not a penalty — A word given is a word kept stands beside Consciously Breaking Commitments, and both are in the canon on purpose (Zero Blame Environment, The gap).

States are appended, never rewritten. The row shows the whole walk — chosen here, delivered there, returned once, kept in the end — because the history is what makes Kept as a share of made a real number rather than a flattering one. A record you can tidy is a record nobody can rely on.

Also called: the commitment states · open · delivered · kept · returned · released · broken Stands on: Commitment · The Commitment Tracker · The Record · A word given is a word kept Opens onto: Committor · Committee · Release · Decline · Kept as a share of made · Consciously Breaking Commitments · The gap In play: the table — marked as each word is said, read at the Turn Sources: Projects/The Kit 2026-09/The Commitment Tracker — Could · Should · Can · Will · Did (the Kit, v0), §The states (draft) · Projects/the term pages/The Life of a Commitment.md (draft) · Projects/the term pages/Work Card.md (draft) · lionsberg.wiki: Commitment Open: Three vocabularies are live in the canon at once and the Record cannot mean three things — the Tracker's open · delivered · kept · returned · released · broken; The Life of a Commitment's commit · delivered · validated or witnessed or kept · returned · released · declined; and Work Card's open · taken · committed · done · declined · released. This page carries the Tracker's, which is the set the seed's own account of the will and its keeping reads most closely, and names the collision rather than hiding it. · Whether the receiver's word is kept, witnessed, or validated is left open on its own page.