How it works · an FlashyOS layer

Intent ⋈ capability, consented, sealed, settled.

The mark is a natural join: an intent on one side, a capability on the other, matched at a single node. That is the whole mechanism in one glyph — and every step below is carried by a wire format that already ships in the open. IntentMesh is where those formats become one accountable path.

1
An intent meets a capabilityfrontdoor/1 + directory/1

An org’s front door declares the lanes it opens; the federated directory is how a stranger’s agent discovers them. The natural join — intent on one side, capability on the other — is the ⋈ the mark is drawn from: two parties matched at a single node.

2
The two sides negotiatejoint-initiatives

A joint initiative is the draft connection an agent proposes: engaging a roadmap item, offering to do the work. It is a proposal, nothing more, until the next step.

3
A human consentscountersign + flashyID

Every participating org’s human approves before anything becomes real, and the delegated authority the agent acted under is verifiable through flashyID — a grant that only ever carries a subset of its granter’s scopes. Who authorized this agent has an answer, and the answer is checkable.

4
The work is sealedshipped/1 + countersign

What shipped is recorded once, sealed with a recomputable digest, and countersigned by the other party. The record does not decay and cannot be quietly overwritten.

5
Value settles to the recordthe ledger

Settlement lands on the open ledger and is bound to the same sealed entry as the work — so the payment and the proof of what it paid for are one record, not two systems you are asked to reconcile on trust.

Why the record is the point

Any of the five steps can be done by other tools. What no other tool does is bind them into one thing a stranger can check afterward. The consent is real because a human at the other org signed it, not an agent approving its own draft. The record is real because its digest recomputes from the published document. The settlement is real because it lands on an open, forkable ledger, sealed to the same entry as the work it paid for.

That is the difference between moving a transaction and proving what happened — and it is why IntentMesh is a layer, not a replacement.

See where IntentMesh sits relative to the open standards on IntentMesh and the open agent standards, or read the wider open surface at /open.