The ExecutionIntent

A decision you can hand to
a person, a team, or an agent.

Most decisions leave the room as a vague verbal blessing. An ExecutionIntent leaves as a governed, versioned package that any authorised executor, human or machine, can act on without losing what the organisation actually meant.

Anatomy

Nine fields. Nothing optional.

Hover or tap a line in the package, or a card beside it. Each field exists because its absence is how execution goes wrong.

execution_intent · EI-2041v3 · sealed
selected_option: rebuild onboarding flow, option Brationale: lowest risk path to cycle targetobjective: onboarding cycle time under 5 daysexpected_outcome: -30% cycle, NPS steady or betterconstraints: GDPR, no PII in prompts, UK data residencyevidence_refs: proto-77, churn-study-Q2, D-098owner: l.okafor@company.combudget: £50,000deadline: 2026-09-30success_measures: cycle_time, rework_rate, NPSapproved_executors: claude-code, github, linearmodel_posture: frontier, no fine-tuning, loggedreview_gates: design sign-off, pre-deploy checkescalate_on: budget 80%, policy exception, driftfingerprint: sha256:9f2c…a1d4
governed · versioned · auditablebridgly
field 01

Selected option and decision rationale

The choice made and the reasoning that beat the alternatives. When priorities shift in March, nobody has to reconstruct why the organisation acted in January.

field 02

Objective and expected outcome

What the work is meant to change, stated before a line of work begins. This is the yardstick the outcome receipt will be measured against.

field 03

Constraints and non-negotiable policies

Regulatory, security, and organisational rules the work must respect. Executors inherit them automatically; they are not a wiki page someone was meant to read.

field 04

Permitted evidence references

The documents, datasets, and prior decisions execution may rely on. Provenance travels with the work, so an auditor can trace every claim to its source.

field 05

Accountable owner

One named person. Escalations, review gates, and receipts route to them. Accountability that belongs to everyone belongs to no one.

field 06

Budget, deadline and success measures

What it may cost, when it must land, and how success will be judged. Agreed up front, sealed in the package, immune to convenient reinterpretation.

field 07

Approved agent, runtime and model posture

Which agents, runtimes, and models are authorised to act, and under what posture. Software executes decisions now; authority must be explicit.

field 08

Review and escalation requirements

The checkpoints where humans look, and the conditions that pause execution and summon the owner. Autonomy with tripwires.

field 09

Configuration fingerprint

A cryptographic fingerprint of the whole package. Change one comma and the version increments and the fingerprint changes. Silent edits are impossible.

Versioning

Decisions change. The record never lies about it.

Reality intervenes: budgets move, constraints tighten, scope shifts. An ExecutionIntent is allowed to evolve, but only in the open. Every version is kept, every change is attributed, and executing systems always know which version they hold.

v1 · sealed 2026-06-02

Initial intent from decision D-118. Budget £40k, deadline 31 August, two approved executors.

sha256:2b81…c9e3
v2 · sealed 2026-06-24

Constraint added after security review: UK data residency. Escalation threshold tightened to 80% of budget. Change attributed to the accountable owner.

sha256:d417…08aa
v3 · sealed 2026-07-08 · current

Budget raised to £50k, deadline moved to 30 September, Linear added as an executor. Approved at a review gate; the receipt will be judged against this version.

sha256:9f2c…a1d4
Dispatch

One package. Six kinds of executor.

The intent stays the same shape whoever executes it. Bridgly routes it to the specialist lane suited to the work, and every lane answers back in progress, exceptions, and receipts.

Software and app implementationship the change
CodexClaude CodeOmnigentGitHubLinear
Analytics initiativeanswer the question
Databricks JobsGenieSQLSpecialist BI tooling
Operational programmerun the programme
JiraAsanaMondayServiceNow
Security responsecontain the threat
LakewatchYour SOARYour SOC tooling
Commercial executionwin the revenue
SalesforceYour CRM
Data productpublish the product
Databricks pipelinesUnity CatalogOpenSharing
Close the loop

The intent is half the story.
The receipt is the other half.