Act
Describe one action as an occurrence specialization with qualified agency, purpose, means, execution assessment and accountability evidence.
Bundle → Layer → Finding → Questions Filled
5 bundles · 11 layers · 11 findings · 44 questions
Action semantics Act-specific boundary and classification over one inherited occurrence.
Action individuation
Specialize one occurrence as a claimed or evidenced action. Atomicity is relative to a declared observation and action profile, not a metaphysical smallest action. Parent occurrence identity and factual status remain inherited. Evidence of an unidentified actor can support a provisional act without naming a person.
Action individuation
Specialize one occurrence as a claimed or evidenced action. Atomicity is relative to a declared observation and action profile, not a metaphysical smallest action. Parent occurrence identity and factual status remain inherited. Evidence of an unidentified actor can support a provisional act without naming a person.
- Which inherited occurrence identifies this act independently of its reports and message envelopes? identity
- What profile makes this one action at the chosen granularity rather than a whole process? definition
- What supports the claim that an actor acted when the performer is unknown or disputed? evidence
- How are repeated reports of one act distinguished from separate attempts? interoperability
Action type and semantic roles
A governed verb or action type constrains the intended interpretation and available roles. Type, capability and procedure references do not prove performance. Intransitive actions may have no direct object; target has vocabulary-specific meaning.
Action type and semantic roles
A governed verb or action type constrains the intended interpretation and available roles. Type, capability and procedure references do not prove performance. Intransitive actions may have no direct object; target has vocabulary-specific meaning.
- Which versioned action type expresses what the performer did? classification
- Which participant and object roles does that type require or make inapplicable? constraint
- Which capability or method is referenced without implying that it was available or followed? relationship
- Which mapping losses would change the meaning of the verb, object or target? validation
Agency and purpose Evidence-qualified performers, delegated capacity and purpose.
Performer and participant claims
Add action-specific performer assertions to the inherited participation surface. Distinguish direct performers, co-performers, requesters, witnesses, software agents, recorders and accountable parties. The recording system is not automatically the performer.
Performer and participant claims
Add action-specific performer assertions to the inherited participation surface. Distinguish direct performers, co-performers, requesters, witnesses, software agents, recorders and accountable parties. The recording system is not automatically the performer.
- Who or what is asserted to have performed the act and in which role? relationship
- Which reporter or capture system asserted each performer assignment? provenance
- How are automated performers linked to operators without merging their identities? composition
- How is a disputed performer assignment qualified before it can be used for accountability? exception
Act-specific delegated capacity
Record the asserted capacity in which an actor acted and the scope of any mandate reference. Descriptive delegation is distinct from a valid authorization, legal competence or permission to execute. Authority evaluation and mandate lifecycle stay external.
Act-specific delegated capacity
Record the asserted capacity in which an actor acted and the scope of any mandate reference. Descriptive delegation is distinct from a valid authorization, legal competence or permission to execute. Authority evaluation and mandate lifecycle stay external.
- On whose behalf is the performer said to have acted and under which mandate reference? authority
- Which mandate version and effective scope are relevant to the inherited execution interval? temporal
- Which limits or revocation evidence qualify the authority claimed for this act? constraint
- Which designated steward may maintain this record independently of the performer and principal? ownership
Purpose and intent assertions
Link stated goals, motives, plans or triggers with their author and evidential basis. Inferred purpose is qualified separately from actor testimony; action completion cannot establish a mental state. The action boundary permits causal or automated agency without requiring a universal human intention test.
Purpose and intent assertions
Link stated goals, motives, plans or triggers with their author and evidential basis. Inferred purpose is qualified separately from actor testimony; action completion cannot establish a mental state. The action boundary permits causal or automated agency without requiring a universal human intention test.
- What purpose or intended effect is stated for this act? definition
- Who supplied or inferred the intent claim and from what evidence? provenance
- Which request, plan or prior occurrence is asserted to have prompted the act? relationship
- Which purpose or motive details may be recorded and disclosed for the permitted use? privacy
Performance context Action roles for objects, means and contextual constraints.
Affected objects and means
Qualify inherited object participation by the action-specific role: affected object, input, output, instrument or recipient as the profile allows. A used instrument need not be consumed; a result need not be a newly created object. External object and measurement masters remain referenced.
Affected objects and means
Qualify inherited object participation by the action-specific role: affected object, input, output, instrument or recipient as the profile allows. A used instrument need not be consumed; a result need not be a newly created object. External object and measurement masters remain referenced.
- Which externally identified objects were affected, used or produced in the claimed act? composition
- Which instrument or resource requirements are claimed to apply and what supports their satisfaction? requirement
- Which quantities describe the action involvement rather than the entire referenced object? measurement
- How are missing, unknown and inapplicable object roles distinguished for this action type? exception
Action circumstances and constraints
Carry action-specific applicability assertions over inherited time and place references. Generic clock uncertainty, geometry, location masters and occurrence interval semantics remain owned by the occurrence and reference models. Constraints here describe evidence, never authorize an action.
Action circumstances and constraints
Carry action-specific applicability assertions over inherited time and place references. Generic clock uncertainty, geometry, location masters and occurrence interval semantics remain owned by the occurrence and reference models. Constraints here describe evidence, never authorize an action.
- Which inherited physical or virtual setting qualifies the claimed performance? spatial
- Which part of the inherited occurrence interval represents actual performance rather than reporting or waiting? temporal
- Which conditions are asserted to constrain this act and where is their applicability evaluated? constraint
- What clock, location or contextual uncertainty limits interpretation of the performance evidence? quality
Execution assessment Assessment of actual attempts, completion and effects.
Attempt and completion assessment
Separate whether an action was attempted from its completion and success. A failed attempt that occurred can be an Act; a purely proposed or cancelled-before-start action remains in the request or plan model. Record status and factual occurrence status are inherited, not replaced by action disposition.
Attempt and completion assessment
Separate whether an action was attempted from its completion and success. A failed attempt that occurred can be an Act; a purely proposed or cancelled-before-start action remains in the request or plan model. Record status and factual occurrence status are inherited, not replaced by action disposition.
- What evidence distinguishes an actual attempt from an unstarted proposal? state
- What action-specific disposition is supported at the assessment time? lifecycle
- Which completion criteria were applied and which remain unverified? validation
- Which retry or compensating act has its own identity instead of overwriting this attempt? exception
Intended and observed effects
Distinguish the intended result, observed changes and evaluated success. Effects may be delayed, partial, adverse or unknown. This model stores qualified action-outcome assertions; it does not execute actions, create external outcome masters or infer causation from temporal proximity.
Intended and observed effects
Distinguish the intended result, observed changes and evaluated success. Effects may be delayed, partial, adverse or unknown. This model stores qualified action-outcome assertions; it does not execute actions, create external outcome masters or infer causation from temporal proximity.
- Which outcome references describe changes observed after or during this act? event
- How was success evaluated against the stated intended effect? measurement
- When was each result observed relative to the performance and reporting times? temporal
- What supports attributing an observed change to this act rather than to another cause? evidence
Accountability and action links Bounded responsibility claims and typed relations to other activity evidence.
Accountability claims and limits
Record evidence-qualified claims about accountability for this act. Performer identity, authority, causal contribution and normative responsibility are separate assertions. Generic corroboration, conflict resolution and record correction use inherited services; a local assertion does not adjudicate liability.
Accountability claims and limits
Record evidence-qualified claims about accountability for this act. Performer identity, authority, causal contribution and normative responsibility are separate assertions. Generic corroboration, conflict resolution and record correction use inherited services; a local assertion does not adjudicate liability.
- Who has asserted responsibility for this act and under which stated assessment basis? authority
- Which supporting and contrary evidence is linked to the accountability claim? evidence
- Which recipients may inspect attribution details without exposing unrelated participants? access
- Which correction or disposal restrictions apply to sensitive accountability assertions? retention
Action relations and exchange interpretation
Type links between acts as information influence, trigger, retry, compensation or process-step evidence. Preserve parent relation and evidence identities. PROV entity derivation is not an unrestricted act-to-act causal edge; export mappings must not erase this difference.
Action relations and exchange interpretation
Type links between acts as information influence, trigger, retry, compensation or process-step evidence. Preserve parent relation and evidence identities. PROV entity derivation is not an unrestricted act-to-act causal edge; export mappings must not erase this difference.
- Which other act is linked and what precise relation is being asserted? relationship
- Which process-step executions reference this act without taking ownership of it? process
- Which entity and activity roles must be preserved when exporting a provenance link? validation
- How does the exchange preserve act identity, uncertain assertions and restricted fields? interoperability
Classifiers Filled
- Family
- World Models
- Category
- Activities and processes
- Entry kind
- event
- Navigation path
- NAV.ACT.ACT
- Domain
- ACT.ACT
- Industry
- Cross-industry
- Tags
- actact.act
- Also called
- K2
What it is Filled
One claimed, ongoing or completed action at a declared profile granularity. The root is an event, sharing occurrence identity with WM-ACT-015. Unknown or disputed facts remain assertions with inherited evidence status. This model adds action semantics and local evidence operations; it does not perform the action, decide legal responsibility or own a process execution.
In scope
- Action type, profile-relative atomicity and occurrence-to-act binding
- Qualified performers, automated agency, capacity, intent and object/means roles
- Act-specific contextual applicability, attempt/completion/effect assessments and accountability claims
- Typed links to other acts, process-step evidence and qualified exchange mappings
Out of scope
- Generic occurrence identity allocation, factual status, event time, geometry, evidence custody, conflict resolution and correction lifecycle, inherited from WM-ACT-015
- Party, organization, software-agent, object, place, capability, method, mandate and measurement master lifecycles
- Unstarted plans and requests, workflow definitions and process-step orchestration
- Execution, enforcement, command dispatch, legal or disciplinary adjudication, surveillance inference and operational instructions for dangerous subjects
- Transport delivery, audit-store implementation, privacy-law interpretation and claims of executable standard conformance
Why it exists Filled
Describe one action as an occurrence specialization with qualified agency, purpose, means, execution assessment and accountability evidence.
Distinguishing features Derived, awaiting review
- Unlike WM-ACT-015 Occurrence / Event: Accept the candidate EXTEND edge as a conceptual specialization. Generic identity, time, participation, provenance, conflict and correction stay inherited; local questions only qualify their action-specific use. Runtime inheritance needs a pinned tested binding.
- Unlike WM-ACT-003 Process / Workflow: The incoming REFERENCE contract concerns process-step execution evidence. It permits a step execution to cite atomic act evidence. There is no mandatory step, ownership transfer or one-to-one cardinality. A workflow node is not itself proof of a performed act.
- Unlike WM-ACT-024 Decision / Approval Activity: The registry identifies this as a candidate child of Act. Specialized deliberation and approval semantics remain there; this Act draft does not impose a decision on every action or certify authority.
- Unlike Capability, request, plan and method models: An ability or intended procedure is distinct from its performance. Future or potential actions allowed by external vocabularies do not automatically enter this occurred-action boundary.
- Unlike Legacy K2 specification and supplement: Legacy descriptive fields are reconciled as leads. Reject universal smallest-unit, one-actor/one-object, actor-owned-record and perpetual-record-retention assumptions. No legacy conformance label is inherited.
Note: Derived from boundary notes against neighbouring models.
What robots and AI may and may not do Derived, awaiting review
Must not
- Create action-specialization assertions against an existing or explicitly provisional parent occurrence under a profile; never fabricate a performer or completed action from a request.
- Retraction is not physical erasure, and deletion of an action record cannot undo an act or delete external masters.
- Deny by default; grant a stated purpose and minimum necessary view for an authorized role.
May
- Qualify occurrence as an act: Proposed local operation, not implemented: attach action type and granularity to an existing occurrence assertion.
- Attach performer and capacity assertions: Proposed local operation, not implemented: link separately qualified performer, principal and mandate evidence.
- Attach action context assertions: Proposed local operation, not implemented: associate purpose, object roles and applicability evidence with inherited context references.
- Record execution and effect assessment: Proposed local operation, not implemented: record an evidence-qualified interpretation of attempt, completion and outcome.
- Link typed action evidence: Proposed local operation, not implemented: record act-to-act and step-to-act links with their source and uncertainty.
- Project a permitted action view: Proposed local operation, not implemented: prepare a local export proposal using explicit vocabulary and access mappings.
Note: Derived from functions, policies, CRUD and access rules; prohibitions were not authored for agents as such.
Moral aspects Derived, awaiting review
- Candidate incoming WM-ACT-003 REFERENCE and candidate child WM-ACT-024
- Prevent act logs from becoming unrestricted behavioral surveillance: minimize purpose, motive, location and participant information; apply access to linked evidence as well as fields.
- Jurisdiction-specific authority, privacy, evidentiary admissibility and accountability review; no compliance certification.
- Execution, enforcement, command dispatch, legal or disciplinary adjudication, surveillance inference and operational instructions for dangerous subjects
- Transport delivery, audit-store implementation, privacy-law interpretation and claims of executable standard conformance
- The registry identifies this as a candidate child of Act.
Note: Sentences mentioning harm, privacy, consent or similar, collected from the specification.
Owners Filled
Steward
Designated adopting-Dimension record steward and authority basis; actor participation alone grants no record ownership
Roles
- Record steward
- Maintain the act profile and lawful record governance under the adopting Dimension.
- Evidence recorder
- Submit sourced action assertions and distinguish own observation from third-party report.
- Attribution reviewer
- Review performer, intent and responsibility claims; route disputes to inherited services.
- Participant or representative
- Submit supported corrections within granted scope; participation is not permission to rewrite other evidence.
- Access and disposition reviewer
- Apply external access decisions, minimization, holds and lawful disposal policy.
- Mapping maintainer
- Maintain versioned standards bindings and visible loss reports without claiming untested conformance.
Links to other meta-models Filled
extends
- WM-ACT-015 - Conceptually specialize an occurrence with actor/action semantics, reusing parent identity and generic machinery. Required semantic dependency; runtime binding remains a hold.
references
- WM-ACT-003 - Optional navigational back-reference to process-step evidence consumers. Mirrors the incoming candidate reference without reversing ownership or requiring one-to-one cardinality.
- External party and software-agent masters - Resolve performers, co-performers, principals and recorders without duplicating their identities or lifecycles.
- External capability, method, plan and mandate records - Qualify intended action and claimed capacity without executing procedures or evaluating legal validity.
- External object, place, observation and outcome masters - Qualify action roles and result evidence while retaining external master identity and parent context semantics.
aligned
- PROV-O and PROV-DM - Map qualified activity associations, delegation and information influence; distinguish entity derivation. No claim of implemented PROV conformance.
- Activity Streams 2.0 and Schema.org Action - Map action types and roles with explicit loss handling for intransitive actions, future actions and distinct target meanings.
- CloudEvents v1.0.2 - Optional exchange envelope mapping only. Preserve occurrence versus envelope identity and producer fallback-time semantics.
neighbor
- WM-ACT-015 Occurrence / Event - Accept the candidate EXTEND edge as a conceptual specialization. Generic identity, time, participation, provenance, conflict and correction stay inherited; local questions only qualify their action-specific use. Runtime inheritance needs a pinned tested binding.
- WM-ACT-003 Process / Workflow - The incoming REFERENCE contract concerns process-step execution evidence. It permits a step execution to cite atomic act evidence. There is no mandatory step, ownership transfer or one-to-one cardinality. A workflow node is not itself proof of a performed act.
- WM-ACT-024 Decision / Approval Activity - The registry identifies this as a candidate child of Act. Specialized deliberation and approval semantics remain there; this Act draft does not impose a decision on every action or certify authority.
- Capability, request, plan and method models - An ability or intended procedure is distinct from its performance. Future or potential actions allowed by external vocabularies do not automatically enter this occurred-action boundary.
- Legacy K2 specification and supplement - Legacy descriptive fields are reconciled as leads. Reject universal smallest-unit, one-actor/one-object, actor-owned-record and perpetual-record-retention assumptions. No legacy conformance label is inherited.
What else AI and robots need to interact with it Incomplete
Identity and identifiers required Filled
- Authoritative master-system identifier scoped by its issuing namespace
- Governed global identifier or IRI
- UUID or ULID assigned by the adopting Dimension
Direct properties not applicable Not applicable
Not applicable
Institutional or informational subject: no invented physical properties.
Recognition optional Missing, in the backlog
Not described yet. This gap is in the card backlog.
Capabilities and actions required Filled
- Qualify occurrence as an act: Proposed local operation, not implemented: attach action type and granularity to an existing occurrence assertion.
- Attach performer and capacity assertions: Proposed local operation, not implemented: link separately qualified performer, principal and mandate evidence.
- Attach action context assertions: Proposed local operation, not implemented: associate purpose, object roles and applicability evidence with inherited context references.
- Record execution and effect assessment: Proposed local operation, not implemented: record an evidence-qualified interpretation of attempt, completion and outcome.
- Link typed action evidence: Proposed local operation, not implemented: record act-to-act and step-to-act links with their source and uncertainty.
- Project a permitted action view: Proposed local operation, not implemented: prepare a local export proposal using explicit vocabulary and access mappings.
Hazards and failure modes optional Missing, in the backlog
Not described yet. This gap is in the card backlog.
Standards and interfaces required Derived, awaiting review
- PROV-O: The PROV Ontology
- PROV-DM: The PROV Data Model
- Constraints of the PROV Data Model
- NIST Privacy Framework: A Tool for Improving Privacy through Enterprise Risk Management, Version 1.0
Context of use required Filled
- Vocabulary alignment is cross-domain and does not supply legal tests of intention, responsibility, authority or evidence.
- The selected NIST guidance is voluntary and is not treated as a global law or a latest-version claim. Adopting jurisdictions and sectors require separate review.
Sources Filled
- PROV-O: The PROV Ontology - World Wide Web Consortium
- PROV-DM: The PROV Data Model - World Wide Web Consortium
- Activity Vocabulary - World Wide Web Consortium
- Action - Schema.org community
- Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps - Internet Engineering Task Force
- CloudEvents specification - Cloud Native Computing Foundation
- Constraints of the PROV Data Model - World Wide Web Consortium
- NIST Privacy Framework: A Tool for Improving Privacy through Enterprise Risk Management, Version 1.0 - National Institute of Standards and Technology
Open questions
- Run the prepared direct source checker outside the sandbox, review redirects and challenges, and finish release, errata, licensing and applicability verification.
- Implement and test occurrence inheritance and nested instance schemas using the proposed cases for unidentified actors, intransitive actions, failed attempts, retries, restricted evidence and lawful disposal.
- Review domain and jurisdiction profiles and restore independent external review before any canonical or publishable-draft promotion.
- Independent external review; Claude and Grok are skipped under owner instruction.
- Direct HTTP response status, source-body digests and complete version/errata review; Schema.org development release is not pinned.
- Executable occurrence inheritance, nested data schemas, controlled role vocabularies and mapping fixtures.
- Jurisdiction-specific authority, privacy, evidentiary admissibility and accountability review; no compliance certification.
- Domain-specific granularities, collective agency, contested mental states and long-running actions require adopting profiles.
Machine files
Provenance
world-models research · reviewable-draft
Built from: models/wm-act-002-act/spec.yaml