A seat at the table.
Three seams. Every surface.
Joule Table is an open standard for an agent that stays accountable wherever it works — a coding editor, a team channel, a live voice or video room. The same three seams travel with it: gate every action against a signed grant, meter every model call in joules, seal every result to a ledger anyone can verify. Two reference bindings ride it. Apache-2.0.
Two reference bindings
The same standard, pointed two ways.
Where the agent works changes; what it owes does not. In an editor it is Joule Hook. In a channel it is Joule Desk. Each is the same three seams, carried to a different surface.
Joule Hook
the editor binding
Carries the three seams into a coding editor. Every tool action is gated against a grant before it runs; every model call is metered at its boundary; every decision seals to a receipt you can read — through the extension points an editor already exposes.
- Gate on every tool action, decided outside the model
- Meter at the model-call boundary, in joules
- A receipt surface you can read where you work
Joule Desk
the teammate binding
A persistent teammate you delegate to on a shared surface — a chat, a code forge, or a live voice or video room. Its authority is a signed grant, not a setting; its work is metered and sealed to a ledger the whole channel can verify.
- Delegate by mention; it acts under a scoped grant
- Chat, forge, and live-room binding classes
- A shared ledger anyone can verify
Joule Desk's own editor class is Joule Hook — the two bindings meet there. Add a surface and it is a new binding, not a new trust model.
Three seams
Written once. Carried by every binding.
An accountable agent needs the same three things at every surface: a decision made against a grant, a call measured in joules, and a record anyone can verify. Joule Table defines those three seams once, so a binding is a surface pointed at them — never its own idea of trust.
gate
authority, decided outside the model
Every action is decided against a signed grant, before the model runs — and the decision is sealed. The grant names the capabilities the agent may use and carries a joule budget. Authority is something you can hold up and check, not a setting you have to trust.
meter
joules, at the model-call boundary
Energy is read at the model-call boundary with honest provenance — measured, modelled, or estimated, and labelled as which. Every call is accounted, and the number carries how it was known. The ceiling in the grant is enforced here, not hoped for.
receipt
a ledger you can verify
Each decision and each completed unit seals to a ledger. Anyone with the steward key can verify who did what, under which capability, at what energy. A record you check — not a dashboard you watch, not a report you take on faith.
Gate, meter, receipt — in that order, and always the same object underneath: one signed grant that both authorises the action and bounds its joules, sealed into one record when the work is done.
Composition
Composed, not reinvented.
Joule Table does not introduce new machinery. Each seam is assembled from open standards that already stand on their own — Joule Table is the shape that binds them into one accountable agent, and names the contract a binding must keep.
JCP
Identity, signed grants, the shared channel, orchestration. The grant the gate decides against is a JCP grant — a capability and a joule budget in one signed object.
Mesh
Energy-accounted routing to the cheapest sufficient model call. The meter reads what the route reports, at the model-call boundary.
efficiency/1
The energy receipt: joules per completed unit, with waste accounted honestly. It is what the receipt seam seals.
Sandbox
Attested execution the receipt can point back to — evidence the work happened where and how it says it did.
One shape over standards that already exist — so an accountable agent is a composition you can read, not a black box you are asked to believe.
An open standard
Free, and meant to be built on.
Joule Table is one of the Transaction Science open standards. The point is not an agent to sell but a shape anyone can carry — so an accountable agent is a shared foundation, not a feature someone owns.
Apache-2.0
The umbrella and both reference bindings are permissively licensed. Read them, build a binding for your own surface — no fee, no asterisk.
Reference bindings
Joule Hook and Joule Desk are not a product sitting behind the standard; they are the standard, shown. Each is one conforming way to carry the seams.
Energy, accounted
Every call and every completed unit can carry a receipt in joules, with honest provenance. It is there to be verified, and it is never a bill.
One shape, any surface
An editor, a channel, a live room — each is the same gate, meter, and receipt. A new surface is a new binding, not a new idea of trust.