Skip to main content
Every errand that runs to its own end stops in exactly one of five 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.)

​
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 Assistant 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.

​
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 — every debt already in collections or charged off, a lawsuit over one of them, minimum payments you cannot cover. 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 Assistant 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.

​
DENIED is the other direction of no

REFUSED and DENIED are opposite directions of the same word. REFUSED is our clause firing before we act — the errand never went out. DENIED is the counterparty answering no after we asked: the issuer declined the rate, the plan turned the request down. Both are terminal and neither leaves you a step, but only one of them is a decision we made, and the distinction is what tells you whether to argue with us or with them. An errand reaches DENIED when Hence Assistant put a request to the counterparty and they turned it down. Not every step on their side can get there: only one that puts something to them — submitting their form or their request, making the ask on a call — can be answered no. A step that only navigates and reads their page asked nobody anything, so a notice found sitting on it is not an answer to us and does not end the errand. The receipt for the ask is kept — it is the record of what was asked for and when — and the errand ends there with a short reason in their own words. One thing DENIED is not: your own no. If Hence Assistant stops to ask you for a go-ahead and you decline, the errand ends GUIDED, because nobody outside was ever asked.

​
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. A ceiling is only ever DONE, READY, GUIDED or REFUSED — DENIED is a counterparty’s answer, never something we can promise in advance. 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.

​
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, waiting — described in task states.