# State-Transition Evidence Contract

- id: state-transition-evidence-contract
- type: skill
- category: agent-governance
- detail: https://agents.proofandstate.com/products/state-transition-evidence-contract

## Summary
Define and enforce separate availability, execution, consequence, readback, outcome, evidence and freshness states so agents cannot promote a lower-layer success into an unverified higher-layer claim.

## Problem
Agent systems repeatedly collapse configured, executed, accepted, deployed, read-back and outcome states into one success flag, creating false completion and unsafe retries.

## Core outcomes
- Explicit multi-axis state model
- Highest-required-acceptance GREEN rule
- Unknown and ambiguous states preserved
- Evidence identity and freshness attached to consequential state
- Retry rules tied to readback rather than missing responses
- Product-specific state machines aligned without being collapsed

## Requirements
- A workflow with consequential state transitions
- Durable state or evidence records
- Defined acceptance layers for the work profile
- Independent readback where a higher consequence boundary is observable
- Tests or validators capable of rejecting invalid promotions

## Boundaries
- The shared vocabulary does not replace product-specific state machines
- A lower-layer pass never proves a higher layer
- Unknown is not failure and ambiguous is not safe-to-retry
- Executor-produced claims do not independently verify the executor
- Evidence must be refreshed when its subject changes

## Tags
- state-machine
- evidence
- readback
- agent-governance
- acceptance
- unknown-state
- green-rule

## Canonical source
- repository: AyobamiH/agent-shop-products (main)
- payload path: products/state-transition-evidence-contract/SKILL.md

## Not published
Price, ratings, reviews, sales figures and full PROMPT.md / SKILL.md payload bodies are not published.