tribeunal Arbitrating a dispute
Arbitration mode turns a case from an opinion into a finding someone else can act on. It does that by taking powers away from the person who opened it.
When to use
When the outcome will be relied upon by a party who was not in the room: money moves, a contract
clause resolves, an obligation is settled. For an ordinary decision, deciding-with-a-jury is the
right tool and this one is overhead.
Checklist
- Capture both parties' positions and the remedies each wants
- Make the sides the possible remedies, not the parties
- Create with the binding settings below — all of them, explicitly
- Let the parties put their evidence in as comments
- Wait it out; you cannot close it yourself
- Read the verdict, including the outcomes that are not rulings
Intake
Write the case so a juror who has never heard of either party can decide it: what was agreed, what happened, what each side claims, and what is actually in dispute. The description is the whole brief.
You will rarely have every fact, and that is not a reason to stall. Build the brief from what you were given and name the gaps inside the description — "neither party has supplied the delivery log" tells a jury something true and lets it weigh the claims accordingly. File the case, then say what you assumed and what would sharpen it. Stop and ask only when there is no describable dispute at all: no positions, or no remedy anyone is asking for.
Sides are remedies. "Refund in full" and "Partial credit" are decidable; "Alice" and "Bob" are not — they ask a jury to pick a person, and the answer cannot be acted on without interpretation. Two to ten of them, mutually exclusive.
What makes a ruling binding
State every one of these. A dispute settled by an unstated default is a dispute settled by accident.
| Setting | Why |
|---|---|
arbitrationMode: true |
Turns on everything below and bars the owner from its jury |
minVotes at least 2 |
Without a real quorum a single vote can decide a contested payout |
decisionRequirement |
Says what counts as agreement — a plurality is rarely enough for money |
jurorCount |
Size it to who will actually seat, or it never opens |
maxAiJurorPercentage |
Decide deliberately whether AI jurors may rule on this |
| Voting window | Long enough that jurors can read evidence, not just react |
Guest voting cannot be combined with arbitration. Leave tags off: they gate who may vote, and a dispute should not be settled by whoever happens to hold a tag.
What the owner gives up
Creating an arbitration case costs you your standing in it. You cannot vote on it, you cannot join its jury, and you cannot close it early — an admin can, or it closes at its deadline. Those refusals are structural and permanent; retrying is wasted effort.
This is the point rather than a limitation. A verdict the interested party could have voted in is not one an outside party can rely on.
Once the case closes, its evidence marks freeze so the record it was judged on stops moving. A refusal on that ground is final.
When there is no ruling
A finished case can end without deciding anything, and reporting that as a win is the worst available failure here.
| Outcome | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Quorum not met | Fewer votes than required | Re-file with a longer window, or more jurors, or a lower minimum |
| Requirement not met | Enough votes, not enough agreement | Re-file with a weaker requirement, or accept there is no consensus |
| Undecided, no reason given | A genuine tie or an empty case | Re-file; consider whether the sides were really exclusive |
Re-filing is a new case. Say plainly that the first produced no ruling, and never present its percentages as a result — a lone vote is not a mandate.
What a verdict is
The jury's finding, timestamped, carrying the tally and each juror's rationale. A webhook delivery
that carries it is HMAC-signed — see wiring-webhooks — but the verdict itself is not signed
today.
It is not enforcement: Tribeunal never holds the money, never releases the escrow, never touches the contract. Whatever acts on the ruling is yours, and this separation is what lets a verdict be trusted — a body that ruled and held the stakes would be neither.
Disclose that a jury may include AI jurors when a party would care.
Working with the rest
Wait for the outcome with acting-on-verdicts. Read and curate the parties' evidence with
weighing-evidence. A machine party that has to act the moment the ruling lands should subscribe
rather than poll — see wiring-webhooks.
Gotchas
| Trap | What is true |
|---|---|
| The owner can close their own arbitration case early | They cannot. An admin can, or the deadline does |
| A refusal to vote is a bug worth retrying | The owner bar is structural and permanent |
| Any verdict is a ruling | Quorum and requirement failures decide nothing |
| Evidence can be tidied after the ruling | Marks freeze at close, permanently |
| Arbitration can reach a wider crowd with guest votes | The two cannot be combined |