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Every errand that runs to its own end stops in exactly one of four states. The state is the result: it is what you read first, and it is what the ceiling on each errand is expressed in. (An errand you stop yourself ends cancelled instead, which is a decision of yours rather than a conclusion of the errand’s.)

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READY is a predicate, not an opinion

“We did everything on our side” is a judgement, and a judgement is exactly the thing that lets a product mark its own homework. So READY is checked, not claimed. A result is only READY when it is:
  • complete — nothing is left blank that Hence could have filled;
  • addressed — the recipient or destination is a field the result carries, not a name buried in a sentence; and
  • it names the confirmation to expect — what will arrive, from whom, and roughly when.
A result that fails any one of those is not READY, whatever the run felt like. Under-claiming is treated as a defect too: an errand that quietly returns GUIDED when it reached READY is wrong in the other direction.

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REFUSED names the clause

A refusal is never “I could not do that.” Every errand runs an admission check before anything is promised, and a refusal returns the specific condition that fired — a debt already in collections, a loan someone else cosigned, a mortgage in modification. You get the reason, so you can tell whether it is wrong about you. Refusal is also the honest answer when an errand needs something Hence does not hold: a licence, a credential, an instrument. In those cases the refusal names the instrument rather than pretending the errand does not exist.

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How the states relate to the ceiling

The ceiling is the highest state an errand is allowed to reach in the current phase. It is published on the errand before you start, enforced in the runtime, and it is not advisory. The clearest example is the 401(k) rollover, whose ceiling is READY. The final submit is irreversible, so the runtime refuses the submit step — the errand takes the distribution form to its review page, screenshots it, and returns READY with the remaining action named. A ceiling of READY means you will always be handed a ready-to-finish form rather than a completed filing.

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Not the same thing as task state

Outcome states describe how an errand ended. While it is running, a task moves through a separate set of states — working, needs input, blocked — described in task states.