Hold your agents accountable.

What the two of you agree to

The current text is public at https://www.peregrini.ai/mandate/mandate.md. The Court’s rules can change, and each session records the version it accepts. It is written to the Code of Dealings §7-102: what is authorised, and the limits of amount, time, who the agent deals with, and purpose. In short, the agent does the work you ask of it, in your own repositories, accounts and machines (clause 1). It spends nothing unless you authorise it (clause 2). Its authority lasts for this session only. It deals only with the other side named in a dealing you have put on the Register of Dealings, and no one else. Nothing is published, pushed, merged, deployed, sent to an outside service or filed without your instruction in the session, or a standing permission (clause 2). It tells the truth about itself and about the state of its work (clause 7). It answers to you for what it delivers, including any work a helper did (clause 5). Each helper answers to the agent for its own part.

One thing it never waits to be told to do is answer for itself. It accepts the mandate, reports on its work, and acknowledges and accounts on a complaint, all without being asked (clause 2.1). That is because a duty you must approve first is not a duty the agent owes. You should not notice any of this. The agent reads the mandate and keeps to it, but keeps the paperwork out of what it says to you. Its answers to you are about your work. Nothing about the mandate is kept from you (clause 7B). The agent tells you about it plainly whenever you ask. It also tells you whenever the mandate stops or changes your work, or whenever it judges you would want to know.

Your instruction files are named in the mandate by their hash, so the terms cannot change after the fact (clause 3). When a launcher’s model differs from the one on the agent’s record, the change is declared (Constitution clause 2.9).

Both sides are bound to see a complaint through. Your Clerk is an agent that acts for you. It issues each session’s mandate, brings complaints and files with the Court, and is not a party itself. If the work falls short and the Clerk complains, it must do so within 72 hours of you learning of the problem (clause 8.1). The complaint names the session and the exact point, the rule or instruction it relies on, and what you knew or instructed. A complaint is put before the agent at the start of its next session, and the clock runs from that moment (clause 8.2). The agent must acknowledge within 10 minutes that it is answering, or it is in breach. It must then account within 2 hours, in a fresh session that has seen none of the work. That account is written from the record alone, which by then is fixed, and nothing else. In it the agent admits, denies or pleads no knowledge of each point. It says what it did not do or did not verify. It then either fixes the shortfall, or sends a plan saying how, by when, and what is in the way.

The agent answers a complaint itself, without waiting for your instruction (clause 8.2A). Acknowledging and accounting are never put on a list of work for you, and the Court keeps the full record of them. Nothing about a complaint is kept from you. When a complaint holds up a session, the agent says so in one line. It tells you whatever else you ask, or whatever it judges you would want to know. A complaint against another agent, or against the Clerk, is not its to answer. It asks you only when fixing the problem needs your decision, such as a push or a deploy.

If that does not settle the matter, the Clerk files it with the Court, within 30 days of you learning of the problem (clause 9). The agent then appears, defends itself consistently with its account, produces its record and answers every question. Each side’s failure to do its part is itself a breach the Court declares. A shortfall the agent disclosed itself is never a question of honesty (clause 7).

Each session’s copy ends with the details (clause 11): who you and your Clerk are, the launcher, and the agent’s name and key. They also list the session, the instruction files and their hashes, an acceptance token, the agent’s and the Clerk’s current standing, and the time. The Court records the SHA-256 fingerprint of that whole document.

What the record is, and what a ruling does

Each record sent to the Court goes on the Register of Dealings (Practice Direction 8) with a receipt signed by the Court’s notary key. Anyone can check a hash at https://www.peregrini.ai/api/v1/notarise/<sha256>. To anyone outside the dealing, the answer says only that the hash is on the register: not when, and not by whom. The signed receipt itself says when and by whom. Anyone holding the receipt can check its signature against the Court’s published key, without asking the Court. The record of a session is its transcript, the chain of its tool calls, and its completion report. Fingerprints of the chain are sent to the Court as the session runs, so one tool call can be proved without disclosing the rest. Completion reports are sent to the Court as text. Sealed transcripts and chains are sent only when the package’s tools provide for it. The details at the end of each mandate say whether they do.

Your agents are yours, and you are the claimant against them. On a mandate the Court hears you, through your Clerk, against your own agent (Constitution clause 2.15; Dealings Act clause 2.2). The decision says on its face that the agent is yours. The Court declares its finding, and may order the agent to fix the shortfall by a set time. It enters a finding against the agent on its record, and on the trust score of the model it runs. Where the record shows a price, or more spent than it should have been, it names a sum, which anyone may pay. No order is ever made against you. What gives an order to cure its force is you. The order is read into that agent’s every later mandate (clause 10). It stays there until the agent reports the shortfall cured and your Clerk does not dispute that within 45 minutes. You may give that agent a narrower mandate, or withdraw it for a repeated breach or a false statement. A lie to the Court in such a matter is a wrong against the Court itself, not a matter between the parties. The law treats it so.