Who signs what.

Two companies do the collecting, and neither of them holds your paper.

Steady Eddie handles the machine end. It brings the kit — a case, wired to nothing — and it builds ways of working for machines itself. If what you have is time in a seat, that is the outfit you will see on site.

Strategic Agent handles the paper end. If what you have is a career of calculations, reports, drawings and job files, that is the one that reads them and turns them into something that answers questions — and says so when your paper does not cover it. Same job for a business's own records.

Either way, the yes is still given to Even Steven and the money still comes from Even Steven. A collector signs nothing on your behalf and keeps nothing it collected.

We are Tacit Tessera, the last one. We keep the list, make the plates and print the numbers on them, hand out the licences, and count every time one is used. We deal with the far end: machine makers, the outfits that fit kit to machines, the people who own the machines, and the software a business already runs.

You never sign anything with us, and we never ask you to. There is no form here to fill in, nothing to join, and no account to open. You will not find your name on this site unless you have already said yes to Even Steven, on its own paper, for that exact thing.

Even Steven brings what it holds to us, to be listed and counted, under an arrangement between the companies — being written down like everything else here, and signed by nobody yet.

The company that counts the uses and the company that owes you the money are not the same company. So neither of them can quietly mark its own homework.

Put all of it in one place and look at what you would be trusting: one company holding your paper, doing the counting, selling the licence and deciding what you are paid — every promise on this site coming down to that company checking itself, in private, with money riding on the answer.

Split it up and the count has to survive being read by somebody who did not write it, and the money has to survive being read by somebody who did not do the counting. That is not a policy either of us can quietly drop; it is how the companies are set up, and a policy can be changed on a Tuesday in a way that a company cannot.

It buys you one more thing. This side can say no to a machine company without it costing you anything, because your agreement does not sit inside a deal with a maker.

One honest wrinkle on the paper side, better said out loud: files you made working for somebody else are usually theirs, and sometimes the customer's, not yours to hand over. That is a question for a lawyer, asked before anything is done with them.

Where the files belong to a business, the business signs — with Even Steven, the same as a person would — and the business is what shows on the paper, by a code rather than by name. Where the practice is your own, you sign, and your name stays on it.

Nothing. Your agreement is with Even Steven, it stays there, and Tacit Tessera never asks you to sign anything. There is no second set of terms waiting here with our name on top of it.

The plain division is this. Money, papers, your yes and your no: Even Steven. Coming to get it: Steady Eddie for the seat, Strategic Agent for the paper. The list, the plates, the number and the counting: us. If anybody ever tells you that Tacit Tessera needs a signature from you, that is not how it is built, and the first call to make is to Even Steven.

Every agreement on the Even Steven side is still a draft with the lawyers, and not one has been signed. Nobody is on the list here. No day in a seat has been recorded, no file read into anything, no use counted, no money moved. The companies are set up this way so the split is real before there is anything to split.