For a dispute
Your record says the cancel came first. Theirs says it did not. Who gets believed? The deal lane inside the arcaeon package lines up two records of one purchase on your own machine into one verdict, and writes it out as a pack you can hand to whoever decides. The local pack is free, with no account.
The problem it answers
Card networks settle one question: was this the cardholder's card. An agent buying on a person's behalf raises three more that nobody records in a form both sides can check later.
- Did the person authorize this agent to do this specific thing?
- Did the agent and the merchant agree on the same terms?
- When did each step happen relative to the others, for example a cancel before the shipment?
Today each side keeps its own story, and the other side can call it made up. The deal lane gives both sides a hash-chained record of the same steps, and a verdict that is the evidence pack.
The steps, one line each
- mandate. The buyer's side only: which merchant, a spending cap, a currency, a time window.
- commit. Both sides record the terms: the items, the total, the currency. The seller's commit cites the buyer's mandate.
- pay. Both sides record the payment reference the card rail already issued.
- ship. The seller records the carrier and tracking; the buyer may mirror it.
- deliver. Either side records the delivery proof.
- cancel. The buyer records a cancel and its reason; the seller may mirror it.
arcaeon verify checks it like any other ledger.What is compared: commit and pay must be on both records. Ship, deliver and cancel are written by one side and may be mirrored; when only one side has one, that is not a finding, and the report says which record lacks it. A commit outside the buyer's mandate is still written, marked as outside it, with the reason, because the record never refuses to record.
The verdict
Either side, or anyone they hand both files to, runs one command and gets one of four words:
| Word | Exit | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| MATCHED | 0 | at least one shared step was compared, nothing differed, and nothing went unlooked-at |
| MISSING | 1 | a step one record must have is not there |
| ALTERED | 1 | the two records of the same step differ, and the report names the fields |
| COULD NOT LOOK | 3 | a record that does not verify, cannot be read, or holds no row of the deal; the reason names the side |
arcaeon deal dispute d-demo2 --buyer buyer.jsonl --seller seller.jsonl
ALTERED at commit#1: commit #1 differs between the tapes in terms.items, terms.total (buyer row 6, seller row 4)arcaeon deal pack writes the same result out for a person: the whole report, a one-page timeline with the verdict word on its first line, and each side's rows for that deal.
Without a pin, both records rewritten in agreement still match each other. Pin each ledger with a witness on your own cadence and pass the pin file, and a record cut short or rewritten after the pin shows up as MISSING or ALTERED.
What it does not prove
- MATCHED means the buyer's and the seller's records agree. A buyer side and a seller side run by one party who wants a lie can write two agreeing records.
- A step neither side recorded leaves no row on either record. The deal lane records what each side wrote, not what happened in the world.
- The comparison reads content, not bytes, so a copy of the same fields reformatted in transit is MATCHED by design.
- Times are each writer's own clock. Only a witness pin bounds when a row existed.
What it is not
- It never moves money, holds money, or talks to a payment rail. The pay step records a reference the rail already issued.
- It does not enforce refund windows. The merchant's policy decides the refund; the record decides the facts.
- It does not say who was right. It is an evidence pack a person can hand to whoever decides, not a ruling, and not legal advice.
The free local pack, today
arcaeon deal pack writes the dispute out for a person on your own machine: the whole report, a one page timeline with the verdict word on its first line, and each side's rows for that deal. No account, no network, no charge.
arcaeon deal pack d-demo2 --buyer buyer.jsonl --seller seller.jsonl -o dispute-packThe hosted verdict does not take deal records today; the command's --remote option says so and keeps the local verdict.