Review states

TRACE-OS blocks nothing: work can be committed and published in any state. It keeps the states distinguishable instead, so that unreviewed work is never mistaken for accepted work.

How work moves

1. Not reviewedCommitted. Nobody has looked yet.
2. Reviewed by a modelOptional and advisory. Objections, not a decision.

Then an actor independent of production decides

• AcceptedBy a person, or by a delegated actor.
• Returned for correctionSent back with an objection. Still unaccepted.
• RefusedRecorded, and unaccepted.

A decision recorded without saying who made it is kept as reviewed by an undeclared actor, never as acceptance.

The seven states

State	Meaning
Not reviewed	Nobody has looked. A normal state, and a publishable one.
Reviewed by a model	A model raised objections. Advisory, and not acceptance on its own.
Accepted by a person	A named person took responsibility.
Accepted by a delegated actor	An agent, process or person independent of production, authorized by a named researcher, examined the evidence and recorded the decision. That researcher remains accountable.
Returned for correction	An accepting actor examined the work and sent it back. The decision is recorded, and the work stays unaccepted.
Refused	An accepting actor examined the work and refused it. Also a recorded decision, and the work stays unaccepted.
Reviewed by an undeclared actor	Someone recorded a decision without saying who they were: not a person, not a model and not a delegate. It is recorded as such, never as acceptance.

How a state is decided

Authority is declared, never inferred. A decision is recorded as a person’s only when it is declared as one. A name that looks like a model’s is recorded as model review, and any other name without a declaration is recorded as an undeclared actor.

A review covers what it names. A decision covers the commits of the record it names, so accepting one unit of work does not accept later changes. When it names the commit the brief showed, it covers only that commit and those before it, and a commit that lands later stays waiting.

The latest decision stands. When a commit has several decisions, the latest by time stands, not the last line in the file. Decisions made in the same second resolve to the stricter one: refuse over return over accept.

Producing is not accepting. An actor that executed the work, or selected a choice the record logs, is not independent of it: when the execution markers of the covered commits or the record’s decisions name that actor, its decision is recorded as self-review, never as acceptance. A person deciding about commits they typed themselves is different: the decision stands as theirs, and the review status counts it as a person accepting their own work.

Authority has words. A delegated decision keeps the words of the authorization; without them it reads “authority not stated” and is advisory.

Where the states live

Every decision is a row in ai/records/acceptances.jsonl, which is tracked in Git. Ask your agent “What stands where?” for the counts across the project.