The Contract Runtime for AI Work

Don’t prompt agents. Contract with them.

The tender that lands at 6pm waits until morning. The stale rate ships before anyone catches it. Your best people spend the day doing arithmetic — while agents that could own the work sit unauthorized. Capability isn’t your bottleneck. Delegation is. Contractual turns your queue into executable contracts: explicit authority, acceptance tests, and a settlement receipt for every case.

Replay your queue Read the Mechanism

50 resolved cases · two weeks · no production access

Settled
Specimen · Contract № 0147 · invoice exceptions v1.4
principal: VP Finance state_in: invoice received · missing evidence state_out: approved | returned | escalated authority: - read: invoices, purchase orders - approve: ≤ $5,000 when all controls pass constraints: - never alter vendor banking details - human review above $5,000 acceptance: - three-way match complete - policy path recorded budget: $0.50 compute · 4 min human
VERDICT: PASS · po_2917 · rcpt_882 · vendor_109
settlement: 100% release · reputation +0.04
§ 1 · RecitalsHow it stalls

Every enterprise agent program is stuck in the same place.

WHEREAS, the demos impressed everyone in the room;

WHEREAS, eighteen months later the agents still answer questions but do not own outcomes;

WHEREAS, no mechanism exists by which anyone could responsibly expand their authority;

The missing machinery is not a better model. It is a contract: produce this state change, under this authority, inside these constraints — and prove it.

§ 2 · The MechanismSix verbs, one loop

Every unit of AI work runs the same loop.

i.FORM An objective becomes an executable contract — starting state, required state, authority granted, constraints, budget, acceptance test. Incomplete contracts are flagged before execution, not after failure. → contract v1.0
ii.PROVISION The contract is assigned to whatever fulfills it best — a model, a specialized agent, a deterministic service, a person. Track records by contract class decide, not vendor claims. → assignment record
iii.EXECUTE Work proceeds inside the authority runtime. Nothing outside the grant can happen — not as policy, as physics. → action receipts
iv.VERIFY The result is adjudicated against the acceptance test — deterministic checks, policy engines, independent review. No vague “agent completed” states. → verdict
v.SETTLE Pass, fail, escalate, or dispute. Resources release, and the ledger records what was promised against what was accepted. → settlement
vi.AMEND Failures are diagnosed to their clause — formation, execution, verification, or authority — and the contract is versioned forward. The system learns in versioned amendments, not accumulated prompts. → contract v1.1
§ 3 · The StaircaseExhibit C

Trust in agents doesn’t grow on a curve. It grows in steps.

Authority stays flat until evidence crosses a threshold — then it jumps. Every settled contract is evidence; enough clean settlements unlock the next lane. No executive leap of faith required.

Exhibit C · % of queue under agent authority illustrative — your evidence sets the pace
0 15 30 45 60 0 400 900 1,200 SETTLED CONTRACTS → 18% 31% 47% №1 №2 №3
Day one: a lane measured from your own resolved cases, before you authorize anything. First expansion when the ledger earns it. Half your queue by month nine. The lane widens on a schedule your evidence sets — and never without your signature.
§ 4 · The ReplayExhibit B · the first engagement

Start with fifty cases you already resolved.

Bring 50 resolved cases from one recurring queue — freight tenders, carrier invoice exceptions, claims intake. Before any agent touches production, Contractual reconstructs the contracts implicit in how your operators actually work, then replays the queue against them. You see exactly what an agent could have owned — before you authorize anything.

Exhibit B · sample replay findings, 50 cases inbound freight tenders
DispositionCasesLane
Agent can execute end-to-end18Autonomous
Needs missing information11Request evidence
Needs operator judgment13Human lane
Must escalate to owner6Escalate
Must not be automated2Blocked
Queue total50
The authorization table is the deliverable: a signed, case-by-case account of what agents can own today and what expands the lane next.

The reconstructed contract set

The rules your operators actually run — made explicit, versioned, and executable.

The authorization table

Case-by-case: autonomous, evidence-gated, human, escalate, or blocked.

The economics of lane one

Cost per settled contract, minutes returned to operators, escalation rate at go-live.

The path to lane two

The specific evidence and amendments that unlock the next expansion.

Fixed fee·Two weeks·Read-only evidence·No production credentials·Two slots a month

And if the replay convinces you: the live operation runs on a committed volume of verified autonomous settlements — you pay only for work that carries a receipt, escalations and reversals never bill, and the commitment widens only on your signature.

Replay your queue

The one-page offer, with the fee →

§ 5 · Queues Under ContractFirst: logistics

Recurring, consequential, verifiable.

Contractual starts where outcomes are checkable and queues are deep — the work operators resolve fifty times a day.

Freight tender quotingquote standard loads, route exceptions Contracting now
Carrier invoice exceptionsthree-way match, evidence chase, approval Contracting now
Claims intake & triageevidence assembly, coverage path, routing Next
Order intakeunstructured orders to clean system entries Next
Dispatch exceptionsdetention, reschedules, customer updates Next
§ 6 · For Operating PartnersPortfolio note

Hold several operations-heavy companies? The same queue repeats across a portfolio, and the contracts transfer — with a settlement ledger behind every claimed saving. Talk to us about a portfolio replay →

§ 7 · ExclusionsWhat this instrument is not

a chatbot · a copilot · a prompt library · a workflow builder · an RPA platform · a safety-rules product · an observability dashboard · a model router  — those are components, tools for the people who build agents. This is infrastructure for the people who put them to work.

Contractual does not sell agents. It makes them employable.

In Witness Whereof

Bring one queue. We’ll bring the contracts.

Fifty resolved cases. Two weeks. You receive the authorization table, the economics, and the first lane an agent can own — priced, scheduled, and yours to decline.

Operator — name & title

Contractual

Contractual Technologies — countersigned

Replay your queue