# How the Sutton SignWriting Office works

The Office gives public questions and shared work a clear route from inquiry to a reviewed result.
It joins research, design, implementation, verification, and public explanation without confusing
advice with authority.

**Steve is the hinge: Front prepares; Back implements; nothing is approved until he says so.**

## One Office, two responsibilities

The **Front Office** researches, organizes, drafts, and reviews. It prepares a decision packet with
the ask, evidence, options, risks, constraints, and acceptance conditions.

The **Back Office** implements an explicitly approved outcome in the project that owns it. It checks
the current state, makes a bounded change, verifies the result, and returns evidence.

The names describe responsibilities, not competing teams. A person or tool may help in either
office, but each handoff keeps its authority and review boundary.

## The shared working loop

1. **Receive** - identify the request, audience, desired result, and constraints.
2. **Prepare** - gather sources, distinguish facts from proposals, and make the decision clear.
3. **Approve** - Steve decides whether the packet may cross into implementation or publication.
4. **Implement** - make the smallest coherent change in the owning project.
5. **Verify** - test the result, inspect what people will see, and record remaining gaps.
6. **Publish or hand back** - release only approved public material and preserve a reviewable source.

## What crosses the boundary

A packet going in carries the ask, constraints, stewardship vetoes, and acceptance conditions. A
result coming back carries verification evidence and any remaining uncertainty. Every crossing is
specific; no packet creates standing permission to publish, contact people, spend money, or change
production.

## Knowledge and publication

The public Office door is https://office.signwriting.org/. Reviewed public explanations may be
published there when Steve authorizes them. Auto-generated method guides on
www.sutton-signwriting.io are retired.

Private handbooks retain correspondence, account administration, local systems, recovery
procedures, unpublished work, and other operational detail. Public and private editions may share
language, but publication is always a deliberate reviewed copy. Private files are never mirrored
automatically.

## Human authority

Office roles and automated tools may research, organize, challenge, draft, implement, and verify
within an approved task. A human remains responsible for decisions, external communication,
publication, spending, account creation, commitments, and production changes.

## Continue

- [Contact the Office](https://office.signwriting.org/#contact)