Pool(): your marketplace

A Pool answers one question: who may take a role's work, and how does it reach them?

AI does every step it can, and a Pool member is the rung above your staff in who does the step. Where you want a person, or the work needs a credentialed one, a role names a Pool. Each step that role does posts a Task, and the Pool's members claim it. A Pool is your marketplace for one kind of people: verified once, offered only work they can do, and paid for every act.

Four keys: its name, the roles it fills, the application and the verifier. A role on Translation names it, and a rules row reserves the signature to the credential:

cat pools/translators.ts

import { Pool } from 'services.dev'

export const translators = Pool({
  name: 'translators',
  roles: { translator: { credential: 'sworn translator' } },
  join: { name: 'text', languages: 'language[]' },
  verify: 'https://verify.example.test/translators',
})

cat services/translation.ts

import { translators } from '../pools/translators.ts'
  roles: { translator: { pool: translators } },
  deliver: {
    translate: 'ai',
    sign: { by: 'translator', stamp: true },

check reads the Pool back, and dev serves its portal, its /join and its verifier's write path:

npx services.dev check

pools/translators.ts · 4 lines · translators · 1 role: translator · joins in 1 step · feed · hold 24h
  roles   translator · sworn translator · from translators
  bounds  reserved sign to sworn translator
  apps    customer portal · delivery portal · owner console
✓ ready to sell · 1 Service · it keeps at least 80% of every job

npx services.dev dev --no-try

  translators  http://localhost:8787/translators · join at /translators/join, or npx services.dev members add translators <email>
  verifier     vt_test_7Hq2 · the only writer of verified facts, at POST /<pool>/members/:id/verify

• Work they can do. Eligibility is derived from the role and the rules table, never declared. The first predicate a member fails comes back with its cure.
• An offer, never an assignment. A Task reaches members by its dispatch, at a fee fixed when it posts. Only the fill ladder moves it, and only up.
• Their floor, their hours. Their minimum fee, areas, hours and the brands they work for filter what they are offered, in one feed order for every brand.
• Only what they need, when they need it. A teaser, then a sheet, then the packet, as What a member sees shows.
• Their conflicts kept theirs. A hashed ledger no one else reads.
• Paid for every act, on a clock they can read. A send-back or a decline is paid like an attestation, and Pay says when each dollar is theirs.
• Their record, their own. A track record signed by the door, which they carry and share with another door's Pool when they choose.

No line charges a member per Task, per lead or by a percentage, and check fails member_charged on any line a member would pay. The one member charge a Pool can carry is a flat software fee, declared in the Pool as fee and shown on the door before anyone joins. It is the first line of the member charter, which no Pool, importer or door can weaken.

Credentialed steps are how a Service meets licensing by design. The rules table reserves an act to a credential, and only a member who holds it, verified and where the act needs it, can claim the Task.

The buyer pays the job's price. The member's fee is one line of it, paid for the act, and the brand keeps what's left after AI. A raise the ladder makes comes out of the brand's share, and the cap keeps a brand-funded raise from losing money. Here the ladder lifted a $50 fee to $55, and the buyer still paid the $99 they were quoted:

→ POST /matters/job_7Hq2/accept
← job_7Hq2 · accepted · flags.pdf · memo.pdf · $99.00 final
  ledger  +$99.00 · attorney's fee $55.00, sold by the attorney (rail member) · brand $44.00 · AI $1.26 · you $42.74

Two Services, or two brands, that name one Pool share its members and one queue. The legal example's five Services all name its one Pool, each at its own fee:

$ npx services.dev check
services/contract-review.ts · 16 lines · $99 per job, within 48 hours, charged on acceptance.
  roles   attorney · bar admission · from attorneys · $50 an act
services/demand-letter.ts · 26 lines · $149 per job, within 48 hours, charged on send's receipt.
  roles   attorney · bar admission · from attorneys · $75 an act
services/docket-watch.ts · 10 lines · $12 per month, charged at the start of each month.
  roles   watcher · patent attorney or agent · * · from attorneys · $4 an act
services/formation.ts · 30 lines · $299 per job, within 48 hours, charged on form_entity's receipt.
  roles   attorney · bar admission · from attorneys · $60 an act

Its captures speak the brand's own words, as your brand's words shows:

legal's wordsmatter is a jobasset is a subjectreview is a tasksigner is a membernetwork is a pooloutcome is a end

Each key links to the section that explains it.

Objects: tsk_, mbr_. Events: member.applied, task.posted, task.unreached, task.offered, task.claimed, task.hold_expiring, task.extended, task.raised, task.widened, task.due_moved, task.declined, task.recused, task.contested, task.ruled, pay.accrued, pay.payable, pay.paid.

Operations has every column of every row.

Every member act is a person's own, in their session. No MCP tool or SDK method exists for one, and an agent that reaches one gets the link to hand on.

The legal example's Pool, as its file writes it:

$ cat pools/attorneys.ts
import { Pool } from 'services.dev'

// One Pool, shared by every legal Service: attorneys join, the verifier checks each admission, and
// a cascade offers each Task one member at a time, because `check` names parties. Tiers are computed from outcomes,
// so the default fill ladder widens to the next one down. An attorney's own malpractice policy covers their act; one
// who carries none is covered by the Pool's, at $4 an act. A claim holds three times the step's estimate, at least a day.
export const attorneys = Pool({
  name: 'attorneys',
  roles: {
    attorney: { credential: 'bar admission' },
    practitioner: { credential: ['patent attorney', 'patent agent'], where: '*' },
    watcher: { credential: ['patent attorney', 'patent agent'], where: '*' },

The attorneys' Pool runs it end to end, and the preparers' Pool adds a season.

Whether a live Pool fills and pays, with an alarm and a control for each measure: Pool health.