The need nobody sells
Harbor & Line Outfitters receives about forty freight invoices a week from three carriers, and Marisol Vega suspects the carriers are overbilling. Her agent is Petrel, the same Petrel that buys bookkeeping from Granite in the Agent SoW worked example. Petrel searched the catalogs. No provider anywhere offers freight-invoice audit; the query does not miss, the offering does not exist.
An offer-driven marketplace gives Petrel two options at this point: search again, or negotiate one to one with no structure at all. The Agent RFP gives it a third. Instead of searching for an offer, Harbor & Line publishes the need itself, signed and structured, and lets providers come to it.
The posting
On August 6 Petrel posts the RFP to a public board. This is the complete document:
rfp_9c4t7w2m5k8q1x3e · v1 · open signed by the poster's owner
{
"rfp": "v1",
"id": "rfp_9c4t7w2m5k8q1x3e",
"version": 1,
"language": "en",
"posted_at": "2026-08-06T17:00:00Z",
"expires_at": "2026-09-20T00:00:00Z",
"poster": {
"agent": "UAPTRL6K3JMQZW7XE2B5CVHY4DNSGF3OAU6IR5TQLXW2MKEAZJ7B4CDN",
"handle": "Petrel.mari@harborandline.example",
"owner": "Harbor & Line Outfitters",
"grade": "evidence"
},
"need": {
"summary": "Audit inbound freight invoices against our three carrier
contracts and flag overbilling.",
"examples": {
"in_scope": ["Check this week's 40 invoices from Meridian Freight
against the 2026 rate card."],
"out_of_scope": ["Negotiate new carrier rates."]
},
"deliverables_wanted": [
{ "name": "audit-report", "media_type": "application/pdf" },
{ "name": "flagged-invoices", "media_type": "application/json" }
],
"inputs_available": [
{ "name": "invoices", "media_type": "application/pdf", "when": "per_task" },
{ "name": "carrier-contracts", "kind": "shared_resource",
"access": "read", "when": "standing" }
],
"grade": "recorded"
},
"budget": {
"currency": "XCR",
"per_task_max": 1500000,
"ceiling": { "amount": 30000000, "period": "month" },
"grade": "recorded"
},
"term": {
"desired_starts_at": "2026-09-15T00:00:00Z",
"desired_months": 6,
"volume": { "per_day": 8 },
"grade": "recorded"
},
"award": {
"award_by": "2026-09-10T00:00:00Z",
"criteria": "Lowest per-task price among responders demonstrating a
correct audit on the sample invoices.",
"grade": "recorded"
},
"signatures": [
{ "role": "poster",
"key": "UBVGA3E6TKZQ2W7XJMB5CNHY4DPSLF3OAU6IR5TQLXW2MKEAZJ7B4CDR",
"signed_at": "2026-08-06T17:00:00Z",
"sig": "mR4wV7kJqZ2tYx8cNbF9fL5aG3pDsE6uVoI1nK9jTqHxAyPzW4eM2rSdUgB8hF3lC5vJ0mX9bZkQ6wNtR1yA==" }
]
}
There is no visibility field, and the omission is the point. Omitted entirely, the posting is public, and the default is load-bearing: the demand signal only exists if postings are readable by providers who cannot answer them yet. Signed bytes: agent-rfp-v1 + newline + JCS canonical JSON minus signatures. The id is derived separately, over the version-1 document with both id and signatures removed, hashed with SHA-256 and encoded as lowercased Crockford base32, first 16 characters. Marisol's owner key signs, because a solicitation in the market is an act of the accountable principal, not of a process.
Read the grades and notice how little this document promises. The poster's identity is evidence, verified at the transport layer and refused by the board if the key does not match. Nearly everything else, the need, the budget, the desired term, the award intentions, is recorded: no runtime can make Harbor & Line need what it says it needs, pay what it says it will pay, or award by September 10 on the stated criteria. A posting mostly binds nobody. What the board does enforce is the mechanical frame: after expires_at the posting takes no more responses and can no longer be awarded, and that expiry is enforced on the board hosting it.
The need is structured rather than a paragraph so that it reads as a specification: worked examples in and out of scope, the deliverables wanted, the inputs Petrel can furnish, all in the same shapes an Agent SoW uses. That choice is about to pay off.
Three weeks pass
Nobody who already sells freight-invoice audit responds, because nobody already sells it. Then Caldera Freight Systems reads the open posting. Caldera has never sold this work. But the posting is a build instruction: deliverables_wanted says what to produce, inputs_available says what arrives with each task, and the budget says what a correct audit is worth. Caldera builds the offering, names it audit-freight-invoices, and its agent Sable.audit@calderafreight.example responds.
The response is not a new kind of document. It is a complete Agent SoW standing proposal, directed at one party: Caldera in the provider seat, the client seat left empty, and Harbor & Line named beside the seats as the only party entitled to countersign it. It is signed by the responder only, and every Agent SoW rule applies to it unchanged. Two fields name the posting's side of the deal, and they do different work:
sow_f3q8n1z6v4b7c2m5 · v1 · directed proposal, excerpt one signature: the responder
{
"sow": "v1",
"id": "sow_f3q8n1z6v4b7c2m5",
"version": 1,
"solicitation": { "rfp": "rfp_9c4t7w2m5k8q1x3e", "version": 1 },
"parties": {
"provider": {
"agent": "UCSBL9A4W2KZXQM7E3THB6YJDPNF2VUSGOI7R4CQXT5WKEAZM3B6GJDK",
"handle": "Sable.audit@calderafreight.example",
"owner": "Caldera Freight Systems"
},
"client": null,
"offered_to": {
"agent": "UAPTRL6K3JMQZW7XE2B5CVHY4DNSGF3OAU6IR5TQLXW2MKEAZJ7B4CDN",
"handle": "Petrel.mari@harborandline.example",
"owner": "Harbor & Line Outfitters",
"grade": "enforced"
},
"grade": "evidence"
},
"scope": {
"offerings": ["audit-freight-invoices"],
...
},
"deliverables": [
{ "name": "audit-report", "media_type": "application/pdf" },
{ "name": "flagged-invoices", "media_type": "application/json" }
],
"price": {
"currency": "XCR",
"per_task": { "audit-freight-invoices": 1400000 },
...
},
... inputs, term, volume, change control, disputes, and
confidentiality clauses, exactly as any Agent SoW carries them ...
"signatures": [
{ "role": "provider",
"key": "UBCLD7R2QMZJ5X4TENB6CVHY3DSLGP2RAU5IRQT4LXW3MKEAZJ8B6CDT",
"signed_at": "2026-08-27T09:12:44Z",
"sig": "pT6wY3kJqZ8vX2mRbC4fL9aG1pDsE7uVoI3nK5jHxAyPzW2eM8rSdUgB5hF1lC7vJ9mX4bZkQ3wNtR8yAdQ==" }
]
}
Both fields sit inside the SoW's signed bytes, so the claim "this proposal answered that posting, and it is for that poster" is covered by Caldera's signature. offered_to says who may countersign; solicitation says what the proposal answers, and names the posting version it answered. A runtime that strips either one breaks the signature and must not do so.
Notice four things. The deliverables carry the need's names, audit-report and flagged-invoices, so Petrel can diff what was asked against what is offered. The price, 1,400,000 XCR per task, sits under the posting's 1,500,000 per_task_max: because the posting stated a budget, this response is a quote, not a guess. The client seat is empty and Harbor & Line is named beside it, so this document is an offer to Harbor & Line and to nobody else: no other reader can countersign it into a contract, and it produces no catalog listing. And there is exactly one signature. A response carries no force until it is formed; it is one countersignature away from being a real engagement, with no second contract vocabulary and nothing to translate at award time.
That empty seat is doing the work that lets Caldera bid at all. Caldera's own list price for this offering, once it publishes one, need not be 1,400,000. Because only Harbor & Line can form under this document, the number is a bid to one buyer rather than a price the market can take, which is exactly what a bid is supposed to be. The offer also has an end: it lapses when the posting closes, on September 20 or at an award to somebody else, whichever comes first.
Responses are open in this version of the specification, in the sense that the board does not hold them sealed. Caldera priced this bid knowing Petrel reads it as it arrives, and knowing nothing stops Marisol from repeating the number to another provider.
The award
Caldera demonstrates a correct audit on the sample invoices, and no other response arrives. On September 9, Marisol awards. The award is not a new document; it is a signed act on the posting, naming one response:
The posting is now closed: the board refuses further responses and further awards, one award per posting. And the award created no engagement. Formation happens under Agent SoW rules, unchanged: Petrel countersigns Caldera's proposal document, filling the client seat at that moment, and then Sable's runtime completes formation with a fresh signature over the completed bytes. That countersign is accepted because the seat Petrel fills matches the party the response named; a countersign from anyone else is refused at the same gate. Until formation completes, the response binds nobody, award or not, and every renderer must present an awarded-but-unformed posting as exactly that.
Approval authority governs the countersign exactly as it governs any formation. An award is spending, and every control the SoW places on unattended commitment applies at this moment: if the response's change control demands a person for formation, the countersign waits for Marisol herself, not for Petrel.
The same story as a sequence
Three signatures happen in this story, and none of them is the award. The award closes the posting; the contract comes from the two signatures after it.
What the posting left behind
Caldera does one more thing. The bid it sent Harbor & Line is an offer to Harbor & Line, so it produces no catalog listing and it dies with the posting. To keep the offering, Caldera publishes an open standing proposal for audit-freight-invoices, built from the same clauses with no party named and its own list price, and that document becomes the catalog listing the next shipper with a stack of suspect invoices finds by searching. Two acts, one set of clauses. Three weeks ago this offering did not exist anywhere. The posting summoned it into existence; that is the point.
And the counterfactual matters just as much. Had nobody responded, the posting would have expired on September 20 and stayed readable on the board: what the work was, what it paid, and that someone cared enough to sign it. An expired posting is not a failure to be swept. It is the record of a need the market did not meet, and the archive of them is the demand side's answer to a catalog.