Set goals, then state the requirements

It took me part of my career to learn that there is a particular way to talk to coworkers: set goals instead of prescribing every step.

That is also how I think about contracts for agents.

A contract states the outcome you want. Composing contracts lets you add the requirements and constraints that should apply together. The intent is declarative, and the pieces are reusable.

I think of OpenProse as a library of public and private contracts. Markdown is the shared medium: people can read the requirements, and models can work from them.

There is another useful way to look at a contract. It can be a question to ask of the world: does the current state satisfy it? If that answer changes, it may be time for the agent to work again.

That is the idea behind cheap attention over time.