The act that clears the machine is the act that starts the count.

The row that starts the work is the row that is paid

A skill set does not begin running because a screen says so. It begins running because a person at the machine chooses it by name and signs for it. That signature is the clearance to run. It is also the first line of the invoice and the first line of the pay — not because the three are reconciled afterwards, but because they are one row.

The row carries what is needed to read it back: the Tacit Tessera number and edition it runs against, the machine, and the hour. It is signed at the machine and nowhere else.

There is no default and no last-used. A machine carrying yesterday's choice forward would be running on nobody's authority — nobody chose it today, nobody signed for it today, and there would be no row for either side to read. So the choice is made again, by name, or nothing runs under a name at all.

The chain the count sits in

Steady Eddie and Strategic Agent require skill sets. Even Steven owns them. Tacit Tessera licenses them to OEMs and to AI.

That settles who is on each end of a row. Even Steven owns what is made of the skill, on every track, for the person or company it came from, and holds the consent behind it. Steady Eddie collects on Hands and Machine; Strategic Agent collects on Records. Tacit Tessera issues the number, licenses the edition and keeps the count. At the other end of the row is an OEM — a maker, a kit company, a fleet owner, a business running a machine — or an AI: a platform, an agent builder, a command centre running a Records set.

Both sides read the same row

The licensee reads the row to check what it was billed. The person whose name is on it reads the same row to check what they were paid. Neither side is asked to accept a summary written by the other, because there is no summary to accept. There is the row, and it is signed at the machine by somebody standing there.

That is what makes an hour checkable rather than merely reported. The hour invoiced and the hour paid are not two numbers to be reconciled at month end. They are one line, read from two directions.

Check the count at source.

Paid is not paid correctly

One deployed scheme already pays named contributors per use, and it establishes the rule this register is built on: per-use payment to an identified person works exactly where that person's contribution stays a selectable, addressable artefact. Once a contribution is one of millions dissolved into a general model's parameters, the configuration is gone, and with it the counting.

Three things about that scheme are worth saying plainly. It is offered in place of a right — the contributor gives up royalties and equivalent claims. The payer sets the rate, on factors the payer determines. And a contributor can confirm that they were paid, but not that they were paid correctly.

The third is the reason the count here is signed at source and readable from both ends. A count nobody can check is a statement, not a count.

A note on a word. The register makes no claim of attribution in the machine-learning sense, and does not need one: a skill set here is selected by name and counted by the hour it runs. That is counting, not attribution.

A serve is counted like an hour

On the Records track the unit is a serve rather than an hour, and the row is the same idea: one signed row, naming the seat it came from, the Tacit Tessera number and edition it was served against, and the licence it was served under. Every served passage and every work product names its number and its edition, so a document produced a year ago can be read back against the entry that produced it.

Two kinds of Source are counted for, and the professional comes first. A named person's practice — the calculations, reports, specifications and job files an engineer retained over a career, mined into a reference — where the Source is the person and the name stays on it. Then a company's records, where the Source is the company, coded and never named publicly.

Either kind signs with Even Steven, consents tier by tier, is paid under that agreement, and is given a view of every serve made from their records. Where one seat draws on several contributors it is a Mosaic of per-contributor sets, each carrying its own count.

What a Source reads is a ledger, not a dashboard. Rows are appended and never rewritten, the kinds of change a row can carry are fixed, and the history stays as it was recorded — so the count can be read back in order, row by row, years later.

What withdrawal does to the count

On the Hands and Machine tracks the effect on the meter is stated and does not vary. It stops for new work at once; a job already underway finishes. On the Records track the unit is a serve, so a contributor's withdrawal takes effect at the next serve.

Two dates are recorded and are never collapsed into one: the out-of-service date, the day the job already underway has finished and nothing runs it anywhere, and the true date, the day every copy is gone, backups included. Both stay on file, and so does the withdrawal itself. It is not a breach of anything, and nobody can extend it.

The count follows the withdrawal. No new row opens under that name from the day the notice arrives. The rows already open close when the job they cover finishes, and they are invoiced and paid like any other row, because the work was done.