Recognition that information or an instrument was received or reviewed.
Acknowledgement does not by itself establish agreement, approval, or execution unless the governing action definition expressly gives it that effect.
Signatory
Intentional action has a specific institutional meaning.
Signatory is the native Pactum Governance capability for recording intentional human acknowledgement, assent, approval, and execution against a defined institutional subject.
The meaning of the act remains distinct from the authority supporting it, the subject acted upon, and the institutional effect that follows.
01 · Definition
Signatory preserves what an authorized person intentionally did.
Some governed actions require an explicit human act to be recorded against a defined instrument, record, or other institutional subject. Signatory provides the native mechanism for preserving that action.
The action remains attributable to the actor, represented institution, governing context, exact subject, and authority relevant at the time.
Signatory records intentional human action without collapsing acknowledgement, assent, approval, and execution into one generic event.
02 · Action semantics
Affirmative actions are not interchangeable.
The action performed must be explicit enough to preserve its institutional meaning. Different intentional acts may carry different consequences even when they concern the same subject.
Intentional agreement to a defined proposition, condition, or instrument.
Assent remains attached to the subject actually presented and should not silently extend to materially changed content.
Authorization or acceptance of a defined institutional step.
Approval may permit a subsequent act without itself constituting final execution. Its effect follows the governing context.
Intentional completion of an act represented as execution.
Execution remains correlated with the acting person, applicable authority, exact subject, evidence, and resulting institutional effect.
03 · Authority
Intentional action is meaningful only within the authority that supports it.
Where an action is authority-bearing, Signatory relies upon the representative authority relevant to the actor, represented institution, scope, conditions, and time of exercise.
Technical ability to reach or invoke the action does not substitute for that authority. The governed act remains bounded by what the actor may legitimately cause on behalf of the institution.
Authority origin, recognition, derivation, scope, and temporality are defined in Authority & Governance.
04 · Exact subject
Intent attaches to what was actually presented.
Where an intentional act concerns an instrument, record, or other versioned subject, the subject presented and the subject recorded as acted upon must remain the same identifiable object or version.
Presented
Exact subject or instrument
The specific content and version placed before the acting person.
Intentional action
Action against that exact subject
The acknowledgement, assent, approval, or execution actually performed.
Preserved
Evidence and institutional effect
The completed act remains attributable to the subject that was
actually presented.
Assent to Version 1 does not imply assent to Version 2.
05 · Intentionality
Presentation, access, and authorization do not themselves establish intent.
Signatory preserves explicit human action. The surrounding technical conditions may support attribution or eligibility, but they do not replace the action itself.
Presentation is not assent.
Showing a person an instrument establishes presentation, not agreement.
Authentication is not execution.
Authentication may support attribution or freshness without becoming
the governed intentional act.
Authorization is not intent.
A valid authority determination may establish that an act may be
performed, not that the person chose to perform it.
Interface interaction is not automatically signature.
The action's institutional meaning must be explicit and preserved as
the act actually performed.
06 · Execution modes
Native and external execution retain their provenance.
Many governed actions can be performed and evidenced directly through Signatory. Other actions may appropriately use an institution-mandated process, procurement environment, external electronic-signature service, wet signature, notarization, or another required mechanism.
The intentional act is recorded within the Pactum lifecycle.
Actor, authority, exact subject, action semantics, temporal evidence, and resulting institutional effect remain correlated as native evidence.
The act is performed elsewhere and incorporated with provenance.
Pactum may preserve the external mechanism, transaction reference, imported evidence, integrity information, and recognized outcome without representing the act as native execution.
07 · Evidence
A completed act must remain attributable and reconstructable.
Durable evidence supports the institutional proposition that a particular intentional act occurred under a particular authority and against a particular subject.
01
Actor and institution
Who acted and which institution the person represented.
02
Authority at action time
The representative authority relied upon, including the scope and
current conditions relevant to the act.
03
Exact subject
The instrument, record, version, or other governed object against
which the intentional act occurred.
04
Action semantics
Whether the person acknowledged, assented, approved, executed, or
performed another defined action.
05
Time and provenance
When the action occurred and whether the supporting evidence is
native or externally sourced.
06
Institutional effect
The resulting state or transition produced by valid completion of
the governed act.
A completed Signatory act becomes historically useful because its intent, authority, exact subject, evidence, and institutional effect remain connected.