Acting On Verdicts

Acting on verdicts

Closing a case does not return its verdict; the ruling is attached afterwards. So every flow here is wait, read, act, record — and the recording is the part that goes wrong, because it goes wrong invisibly.

When to use

Once a case exists and its outcome matters. Creating the case is deciding-with-a-jury; voting on someone else's is serving-jury-duty.

Checklist

• Pick the waiting tool from the table below — they are not interchangeable
• Read the verdict as a decision tree, not as a winner
• Act on the ruling
• Before recording anything: read the existing comments
• Record what was done, once, naming the decision it answers

Which waiting tool

Long polls have a server-side ceiling and return before it if something happens. A return is not a failure.

Re-arm

tribeunal_await_case_activity hands back a latestCursor on every response, including empty ones. Pass it to the next call and the feed is gapless. Stop when the case is past its end — a closed case produces no further activity and waiting on one waits forever.

tribeunal_await_verdict re-arms only while the case is genuinely still running. Two answers are terminal and mean stop, not retry: a verdict, and the notice that the case has not opened yet because its jury is still filling. That notice will not change on its own.

Reading a verdict

Work down, and do not skip to the winner.

1. Is it decided? If not, it is one of two different things.
2. Is there a void reason? A void case failed a rule — it did not reach the required turnout, or it did not reach the required level of agreement. That is not a tie and not a narrow result. It is no ruling at all, and reporting it as one is the worst failure available here.
3. Undecided with no void reason is a genuine tie or an empty case.
4. Decided — read the winning side, and the breakdown if who voted matters.
5. Check the version if the case may have been re-run. A superseded verdict is not current.

Never present a percentage from a void case as a result. "100%" of one vote when five were required is not a mandate; it is a case that failed.

Receipt

Acting on a ruling and leaving no trace on the case means the next process cannot tell the work was done — and something else acting on the same verdict is the normal case here, not the exotic one. A webhook and a poller both firing is exactly what these tools are for.

So the record is idempotent by construction:

Read the case's comments first. If one already answers this decision, stop — do not post a second.

Comments are accepted on a case in any state, including after it closes, so there is never a reason to skip this.

Worked example

The verdict comes back decided, winning side "Refactor", decision 01a066b1-ce82-763a-838e-…, on case 03389f81-…. tribeunal_list_comments shows no comment mentioning that decision. You have already scheduled the refactor. Post exactly this:

Acted on decision 01a066b1-ce82-763a-838e-… — jury ruled Refactor (7 of 9). Scheduled as PLAT-412, starting the sprint of 15 September. No rewrite work will be commissioned. Recorded automatically by the integration that requested this ruling.

The parts that matter: the decision identifier, so a later reader can tell which ruling this answers; the outcome as the jury stated it; what was actually done; and who wrote it. A comment saying "done" satisfies nobody and cannot be recognised as already-present on a second pass.

Closing early

tribeunal_close_case ends a case before its deadline, for the owner or an admin. It reports that a decision is pending, not the decision. Wait for the verdict afterwards like any other case. On a case bound to arbitration rules the owner cannot close early at all — see arbitrating-a-dispute.

Gotchas