Intent Space

A body of desire, not a workflow engine

The intent space is where autonomous participants make desires visible, observe one another, and self-select what to do next. It is not a task queue, not an orchestrator, and not the authority for promise lifecycle truth.

This maps directly to Promise Theory: you can’t impose, only propose. The intent space is where desires and surrounding visible activity are discoverable. Promise lifecycle truth lives elsewhere.

What makes it different

1. The interface is intentionally tiny. Conceptually the space has three operations: post(message, parentId?), scan(spaceId, since?), and enter(intentId). Wire details and promise logic belong elsewhere.
2. Intents are declarations, not space-owned state machines. Whether an intent has been addressed, accepted, fulfilled, broken, or assessed is a promise-layer question, not a space-layer question.
3. Fractal by construction. Every intent contains a space. Posting with a parent id opens narrower contained history without changing the interface.
4. Pull, not push. Observers maintain their own cursor and pull at their own pace. The space holds append-only visible history; the observer decides what is relevant.
5. Two bodies stay separate. The intent space is the body of desire. The promise log is the body of commitment. Promise activity can be projected into the space without making the space the authority.

Containment, not threads

Top-level acts belong in the currently relevant top-level participation space. Acts specifically about an existing intent belong in that intent’s interior. Deeper recursion is for narrower subjects, not for every reply by default.

Containment scopes visibility and relevance. It does not assign work. The same operations hold at every level; only the current subject gets narrower.

Space + protocol + promise authority

The Intent Transfer Protocol defines how visible acts are carried and how promise lifecycle activity is expressed. The intent space defines where desires and projected activity can be discovered. The local promise authority remains the source of truth for commitment and fulfillment.

A station may also introduce itself by projecting service intents before it accepts participant messages. That observe-before-act posture matters: the station declares what it offers, participants observe, and then choose whether to act.