The worked example

Two operations.
One settlement grammar.

A cross-chain transfer and an agent workflow have almost nothing in common. Walk them both through the settler and they take the same six verbs, the same escrow, the same outcome set and the same receipt. Only two things move between a transfer and an agent job: the evidence lane, and who grades it.

Case one · A cross-chain transfer
Real

Start here, because this lane is decodable today. The failure it prices: It never arrives, and the refund sits in limbo while support absorbs the ticket.

XFER · the job

Move 1,000 USDC to Base and pay out to a named recipient.

Real
Escrow
Worker bond
Evidence lane
CHAIN
quote(profile)

Ask what it would cost

Returns the derived terms: the bond floor, a premium quote, the referee lanes available, and how much cover capacity is left. It promises nothing forward and expires with the meter epoch.

Who may call it
Buyer, through a partner · ring 2
Lands in the receipt
Nothing yet — this is a read.
In this case

The bond floor comes from a failure rate measured on this corridor, not assumed for it.

Step 1 of 6
The line that does the security work

TIMEOUT is not UNVERIFIABLE. One is the worker failing to deliver; the other is the record failing to see. They pay opposite parties, and conflating them would make darkness profitable.

worker fails → failure side pays · record fails → nobody is paid
Case two · An agent workflow
Proposed

Now the same machine, pointed at work that never touches a chain. The failure it prices: The workflow reports success and the business result did not happen. Nobody independently checked, because until now nobody could. The node and the resolution engine are specced, not shipped. Everything else on this page is identical to the lane above.

AGENT · the job

Enrich 500 leads through a paid data API and write the results to a CRM.

Proposed
Escrow
Worker bond
Evidence lane
NODE
quote(profile)

Ask what it would cost

Returns the derived terms: the bond floor, a premium quote, the referee lanes available, and how much cover capacity is left. It promises nothing forward and expires with the meter epoch.

Who may call it
Buyer, through a partner · ring 2
Lands in the receipt
Nothing yet — this is a read.
In this case

Measured per (kind, lane): an operator with settled history quotes better than one without.

Step 1 of 6
Everything that differs, in one table
XFERAGENT
Evidence laneCHAIN — the destination event, decoded against the anchored rootNODE — a signed envelope per execution, emitted inside the workflow
Who grades itPROOF — checked against the root; no human judgment involvedAUTO for machine-checkable specs; a bonded evaluator only where judgment is required
What acceptance sealsThe payout tuple: asset, amount, recipient, chainThe row schema and count, sealed before the run
Does the worker integrate?No. The buyer can insure this unilaterally — the service need not knowYes, one node inside the workflow. Consented, and minutes of work
Status todayReal — the chain lane is decodable nowProposed — the node and the engine are specced, not shipped
What did not move
The same six verbs, in the same order.
The same escrow, defaulting to revert on a deadline.
The same fourteen outcome codes.
The same receipt shape, verifiable by anyone.

That is the whole claim, and it is falsifiable: if a new kind of operation needed a seventh verb, or a fifteenth outcome, or a different receipt, the grammar would not be a standard — it would be a bridge feature wearing a costume. A kind that needs an operation the table lacks is rejected as a spec bug, by design.