Oracle

#How It Works

Oracle is kept distinct from human attestation. Human attestation means a person reviews and confirms; an Oracle is external or system-provided data used as evidence for a trigger condition. Both trigger families are conceptually visible in the standard, but only the human-attested path is operational. An Oracle can support a milestone trigger or supply decision evidence as a forward-compatible concept rather than an active execution path.

In the milestone lifecycle this lands concretely: a Milestone is PENDING until an authorized human accepts it as REACHED, and the oracle trigger family exists in the vocabulary but is not part of the active path. Oracle trigger family activation — the rules and effects of automated, oracle-driven acceptance — is Future Standard Work and not part of the current release.

#Statements

These statements fix the minimal settled meaning of an Oracle.

• An Oracle represents an external or human-provided evidence boundary.
• An Oracle can support a milestone trigger.
• An Oracle can support decision evidence.
• Oracle automation is forward-compatible vocabulary.
• Human attestation is the active milestone trigger family; oracle trigger is the forward-compatible one.

#Why It Matters

The standard needs a name for where non-human evidence comes from without committing the current core to automated triggering it has not yet designed. Naming Oracle now preserves the boundary between human attestation and oracle-driven evidence, so milestones can stay manually accepted today while the standard keeps room for oracle support later, without over-specifying an unfinished design.

#Related

• Milestone — where the human-attestation vs oracle trigger boundary applies.
• Contract — the agreement context in which milestone triggers fire.
• Ledger Event — the financial facts decisions ultimately record against.