Workstream defines a shared protocol for governed work and provides the software that implements it. People and AI agents can perform work through Garden or other clients while following the same rules for assignments, evidence, verification, review, revision, acceptance, and contribution records.
The protocol describes valid lifecycle actions, their authorization and evidence requirements, and the records they produce. Its core contracts cover versioned project rules, tasks, immutable submissions, checks, authorized Reviews, revisions, FinalAcceptance, and ContributionRecords.
Protocol rules describe what makes work and its records valid; an API exposes those rules to clients. Supporting several API clients alone does not establish conformance by independent implementations.
The current Workstream software enforces those contracts, checks permissions, stores evidence, and records lifecycle outcomes. It remains the canonical authority for the work it manages. Garden and other clients cannot bypass its authorization or write contribution truth directly.
Workstream also evaluates contribution policy into conditional compensation awards. Fulfillment tracking and payment-provider transfers through the established adapter boundary are Planned, not live; see Current v0.1 Status. Acceptance alone does not release payment. This framing does not change award eligibility, finance authority, or receipt ownership, and does not make a payment provider part of the core protocol.
The protocol framing is the agreed product direction. The existing canonical specifications and lifecycle implementation provide its starting contracts; this document does not claim a released standalone interoperability standard, independent conforming implementations, or an existing conformance suite.
Formalization requires a versioned specification identifying normative contracts, mandatory invariants, extension boundaries, compatibility rules, and executable conformance tests. These should be derived from the validated v0.1 lifecycle. Formalizing them must not expand the current implementation into federation, consensus, blockchain settlement, or automated routing.
The current architecture lockdown, glossary, and capability ledger remain authoritative for implementation scope, stored names, and delivered behavior.