# Delivery and dispatch console (/docs/app/delivery-console)

> Study: a study of the work. Defines nothing. No package exists.

> App study: where a Business's staff dispatch demand into work, digital or physical, and see every item by state and by who acts next.



A delivery and dispatch console is the App where a Business's staff run its work. They turn demand into work, see every in-flight item by state and by who must act next, and keep the promise before it is missed.

They see each step's doer, checker and oversight, capacity per credential, jurisdiction and day, quality samples, and the money per act. They act on it: dispatch and re-dispatch, take over, pause, approve a promotion, recruit supply.

It answers "is work flowing, where is the ball, what is at risk". It covers all work: a warehouse's picks, a credentialed filing, a closer's span, an agent's step and an act sent to a vendor rail. The performer's side of the same Tasks is the [Worklist](https://next.mdxui.dev/docs/app/worklist).

Any Business ships one once work outgrows one head. marlow.legal is its strictest instance; the operator side of services-as-software is its general case. The study describes the work; how an App is defined is open, see [What every App needs](https://next.mdxui.dev/docs/app/every-app).

## Dispatch and the axes

Work is never invented here; it is converted. Dispatch is the only birth of a Task, from a named demand: a purchase order or advance ship notice, a fired watch, a schedule, a Workflow step waiting on a person or an agent, or an Obligation. Its forms are chains (order, pick, pack, handoff), templates fanned over a site hierarchy, and a field visit linked to a desk decision.

| Axis | Values |
| --- | --- |
| Substrate | digital, physical, both in one job |
| Edge | empty (the Business holds no licence of its own) or owned (a licensed operator's desk: claims under delegated authority, statutory clocks, a holder of record, a principal's reserved decisions) |
| Steward | none, or a firm or union that sees a roster derived from grants its members give, never accounts |

## Actors

| Actor | Relation to the work | Work here |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Practice-runner | Holds the promise, the method, supply and the P&L | Reads the day, money and risk; approves promotions; decides large remedies |
| Dispatcher | Turns demand into work | Writes dispatch rules and templates; reads demand received, dispatched and unmatched |
| Operations lead | Keeps the pipeline moving | Re-dispatches, balances load, chases the customer's Question |
| Signer of record | The named holder of a statutory deadline's watch | Acknowledges each daily rung; picks the outcome at the deadline |
| QA lead | Checker on sampled and exception steps | Grades samples against a versioned rubric |
| Method author | Owns how the work runs | Edits steps, doers, due times and client labels; every edit is a Version |
| Supply manager | Owns recruited supply | Recruits when forecast exceeds capacity; calibrates and suspends |
| Billing or trust bookkeeper | Owns collect, earn, reverse, remit and trust | Approves refunds; holds and releases payouts; reconciles |
| Compliance | Owns the reserved-act catalog and integrity review | Reviews claim and declination patterns |
| Firm steward, frontline manager, watcher | Grants, not accounts; work reached from work; a delay window | Read a consented projection; read exceptions on an object; pause or cancel one-way agent Actions |
| Auditor, insurer, successor | After the fact | Read the journal, receipts and evidence |

Customers, Clients, Suppliers and integrators appear as subjects, never readers. Agents are doers and checkers, and the doer is never the checker, not even the same model. Code holds the clock and the Gate, which commits or refuses each proposed change.

## Interfaces

| Reader | Screens | Renderings |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Practice-runner | The index View (below); oversight per step with its floor and evidence; money | Email digest; Slack; phone for the day and approvals |
| Operations lead, dispatcher | Pipeline by step; pipeline by state and by who acts next, each group with its clock running or paused; the work item record (journal, steps, packet, evidence bundle, correspondence, money, lineage); dispatch rules and templates; intake triage; exceptions; a Worklist pane reached from objects | Push on at-risk items with a count only |
| Signer of record, docketing | Docket with each asset's ladder (nominal, final week, vacant, satisfied), owner, days left, acknowledgment due; calendar | One-tap acknowledgment on the phone; one-way calendar feeds |
| Method author, QA, supply | Method editor with test runs and Versions; QA sampling queue; capacity per credential, jurisdiction and day; supply; recruiting | Chat copilot that edits the method with Undo |
| Billing, compliance, auditor | Disputes and remedies; standing-service attainment; journal; correspondence register | Accounting export as a read, never a second ledger |
| Agents, integrators | none | API at stable addresses, an event stream, an agent manifest ("no screens: addresses"), a Markdown rendering, a pending feed with pause, redirect, cancel |

The index View is the type's home. Its figures are Metrics read once at the substrate, about the work and never a person. A dropped read renders "The wire dropped", never a zero.

| Work Metric | Keyed by | Never keyed by |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Items open, by state and ball | object kind, step, Offer, Site, window | performer, or a Role over a small team |
| Live clocks inside N days; acknowledgments due; vacant duties | clock class, object, step | performer; the holder is named on each row, reached from the object |
| Agent operations in 24 hours; cost per step for agent doers | agent, step, Offer | a key a named human deputized |
| Demand received, dispatched, matched by no rule | demand source, rule Version, window | |
| Completion by Site and Task class | Site, Task class, window | person |
| On time, misses, cycle time per step, work-in-progress aging | object kind, step, Offer, window | performer |
| Disputes, rework, refunds; margin per Offer | Offer, step | performer |

The Worklist pane refuses filtering all Tasks by Role or by person, whatever columns are shown. With three receiving clerks, the Role is the person.

## Records and actions

The work item carries nine states and who acts next. Its state is derived from an append-only journal through the Gate, never authored by dragging an item across a board.

| State | Who acts next | Leaves by |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Intake | The customer while a Question is open, else the provider | start, decline, cancel |
| Working | The provider; the clock runs | deliver, cancel |
| Delivered | The customer; the clock pauses | confirm, silence, revise, dispute |
| Accepted | Nobody; the warranty runs | warranty ends, claim |
| Disputed | The provider; the fee is held | redo or finish, refund, credit, decided for the provider |
| Closed, refunded, canceled, declined | Terminal | |

| Other record | States |
| --- | --- |
| Step oversight (the ratchet) | human, approve, exception, sample, none; one level per promotion, never below the floor; demoted automatically |
| Deadline ladder | nominal, notice at 30 days, escalation at 14, a daily human acknowledgment from 7, terminal at the deadline; satisfied only by evidence; vacant is an alarm |
| Evidence bundle | assembled while working, sealed and fingerprinted on deliver, bound by acceptance, stale when the output changes |
| Correspondence thread | filed, never closed; drafts released, rejected or amended |

Controls post proposals and render refusals. Verbs:

- **Flow:** dispatch from demand, assign and unassign, re-dispatch, take over (refused while someone is mid-act), pause, redirect, cancel. These are the management of work, and they are what an operator pays for.
- **The item:** propose the next stage, send back, record a Client's direction, triage inbound into work.
- **Deadlines:** acknowledge a rung, satisfy by evidence, choose the terminal outcome.
- **The method:** promote and demote with a Decision, reserve capacity, publish a method Version.
- **Records:** reconcile trust, release correspondence.

### Terms

| Term | In startupbuilder.dev | Definition, quoted from [startupbuilder.dev](https://startupbuilder.dev) or the gap |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Task | [Task](https://startupbuilder.dev/business/nouns/task) | "A Task is an Action waiting on a Worker, with an assignee, a due time, and a place in that Worker's inbox." One step's pending Action. |
| Approval | [Approval](https://startupbuilder.dev/business/nouns/approval) | "An Approval is a Task to allow or refuse one pending Action that exceeds a Limit or a Mandate." A human step in a sold Service is supply, not an Approval. |
| Work item | lacks | Matter, job, work record and work item are all in use; startupbuilder.dev's Task avoids "work item". |
| Deadline ladder | collides | startupbuilder.dev's Ladder means Service rungs. |
| Turnaround promise | avoided | startupbuilder.dev avoids "SLA"; the Outcome contract carries a deadline and an at-risk point. |
| Capacity, pool, lease, proposal, Gate, trust ledger, remedy reserve, dispatch rule | lack | |
| Obligation | lacks a Noun | A filing or response owed to a governor, with a statutory clock; many dispatch from a Metric crossing a threshold. |
| Evidence bundle | collides | startupbuilder.dev's Evidence is growth evidence. |
| Stage, seat, release, engagement | collide | Each has two or three senses in use; law depends on "engagement" as a legal term that startupbuilder.dev avoids. |

## Workflows

1. **Onboarding the Business.** Define the Offer and its Outcome contract, then the method. Staff the Roles; in law only the member enrolls. Set the business calendar and connect email, calendars, payments and sources of record. Bring in-flight work in, or run beside the incumbent, test with seeded orders and an accelerated clock, and publish. A compile issue blocks Live: a person step with no Live assignee, an agent step missing a tool.
2. **The core loop.** Inbound by portal, email, API or agent becomes work after triage. Coverage and a Quote answer yes, yes with a named gap, or no. Each step dispatches to a doer and a checker at its oversight level; a reserved act needs the Signer's Attestation. Deliver requires every checker passed and the bundle complete. The customer confirms or silence does; earning fires on acceptance.
3. **Unhappy paths.** A late person step moves to the escalation target while the customer's label stays. A failed agent step retries, then another Function, then the human pool, then a specialist, then a remedy. A Signer's reasoned decline is final until the Client speaks. A deadline with no owner reads VACANT. The ladder refuses to pass its deadline unresolved. A method edited mid-flight leaves running items on the Version they started with.
4. **Recurring and standing work.** A schedule mints one item per cycle. Under a Subscription, Events mint items and rate terms are computed per cycle. Onboarding and offboarding are items of their own.
5. **Physical dispatch.** A fired exception on a dock becomes a Task through dispatch, routed to a Site and a Time Window. Completion by Site and window feeds the index View; the performer stays unnamed upward.
6. **A licensed operator's desk.** Claims arrive under authority a carrier delegated. A reserved decision is a typed wait on the carrier with its clock, and an adjuster-reserved act waits on an eligible licensed Worker.

Money runs in two planes side by side. The Business's own plane holds posted prices, collect, earn on acceptance and reverse. It accrues a remedy reserve at each earn, and pays supply a fee fixed before the claim on every outcome.

The firm's client billing holds hourly unbilled time, invoices, and trust that payment fees never touch.

## Boundaries

- Views run from work to its performers ("who touched this pallet?"), never from a person to their history. For independent performers the rule allows each one's own Register, used for routing and never shown as a performance board.
- Authority is a relation to the item (claimed, cleared, of record, monitoring holder, the Client), not a Role. The Gate refuses a reserved step without the Signer's Attestation, whoever clicks.
- A platform hosting many Businesses never sees Client File content; access exists only through the Client's recorded consent.
- Disclosure is staged: a disclosure sheet before claim, recorded when viewed; the packet after clearance.
- Customers see client labels, never steps, doers, models, cost or other customers.
- One queue per Tenant; Test and Live are separate, and every write carries an actor or a Mandate.

## Agents

Agents triage inbound work, answer coverage, draft and prepare under Mandate, and ingest external events into ladders. They propose and re-propose dispatch, check as Evaluators and pick samples by rule.

They nudge customers, draft correspondence, compute the reserve and credits, and release holds when a dispute closes. They run the monitors, and edit the method on request with Undo.

Humans keep:

- reserved acts, the daily ladder acknowledgment and the deadline outcome;
- the Client's direction and consent, and advice to Clients;
- releasing or rejecting correspondence;
- Approvals above a Limit, and refunds under "always ask";
- steps at a signing floor, and trust reconciliation sign-off.

The ratchet decides the rest: slow to promote, by evidence over a minimum sample; fast to demote, automatically.

## Hard parts

1. **Deadlines are computed, chained and recalculated** from court rules, jurisdiction and trigger events. A statutory clock in calendar days and a contract clock in business hours sit on one item without confusion.
2. **State is derived.** A kanban drag that writes a stage loses history and makes the record lie.
3. **Methods change with work in flight.** Each item shows its method Version and what a change does and does not touch.
4. **Accounting for the ball and the clock.** Every pending reason maps to a party. A pause on the customer never counts against the deadline; a third-party wait counts by contract term. Errors here trigger automatic credits.
5. **Capacity is a forecast across many dimensions,** fed into the Quote before the sale, with reserved headroom. A blank job duration overbooks.
6. **Migration from an incumbent.** A ladder never imports as satisfied without evidence, and a trust balance reconciles on day one.
7. **Confidentiality inside the operator's own house.** Privilege, imputed conflicts across a firm, and a host that runs the infrastructure without reading content.
8. **Sovereign stops.** A declination, a deadline outcome and a Client-reserved decision are dead ends with one legal key, never "blocked" items an operator pushes through.

## Day one

For an idea-stage founder, the console lives inside the operator App beside the Worklist, not as a product of its own. It holds Work Now: one block per workflow, columns by step, and waiting items with the assignee's button. It also holds the append-only log, and the method editor with test runs and Versions.

Late and failed work escalates to the founder's Worklist, and money shows the per-sale breakdown. The customer's [party portal](https://next.mdxui.dev/docs/app/service-portal) reads the same labels.

| Trigger | Turns on |
| --- | --- |
| A second human performer | Dispatch with re-proposal on decline |
| The first physical work | Sites, Time Windows, templates over a site hierarchy, completion by Site and window |
| A licence of its own | The owned-edge desk, delegated authority, statutory clocks |
| Volume | QA sampling, the ratchet screen, monitors, agents on the work |
| Customers who push back | Disputes and remedies, the evidence bundle, holds, the reserve |
| Regulated work | The deadline ladder, conflicts and clearance, correspondence release |
| Standing Services | Rate terms, attainment and credits |
| Many Suppliers | Capacity, recruiting, calibration, steward projections, integrity review |
| A firm billing its own clients | Time and expense, invoicing, trust with three-way reconciliation |

The Startup layer gates the order by lifecycle stage. An established law firm needs the ladder and trust on day one, close to the reverse of a Startup's order.

## Related studies

## Prototypes this study needs