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Refused (state)

Definition

The negative terminal state of a Shrubbery. The Knight explicitly declined the Handshake; the commitment will not be tracked as an obligation.

Avoid: rejected, declined, cancelled.

Role

Refused is the consent-first system's escape valve. A Knight who refuses a proposed Shrubbery is exercising their right not to be held to a commitment they did not accept. The row is immediately removed from the Accord and enters the Ghost Rate numerator, incrementing the Lead's Ghost Rate metric.

Refused rows are terminal but preserved — they appear in the archive section of the Garden and surface on the Knight's Dossier as Ghost Commitments. The refusal is attributed to the Knight in the audit trail with a handshake_refused event.

A refusal is distinct from an aged-out Pending_Handshake: a Refused row is an explicit action; aged-out rows reach the same Ghost Rate effect passively via the staleness threshold.

Lifecycle

  • Pending_Handshake → Refused — Knight refuses via the Accord. A handshake_refused audit event is emitted. Terminal.
  • Refused is terminal — no further transitions are possible.

Last updated: 22 June 2026