Separate executable actions, observed events and consumer actor grain
Answers Metaphysics · Ontology · Modality · Semantics
Action is the executable operation atom and Event is the observed fact. The canonical design path is Action → triggers Event. Every Event states the grain it is recorded at: one person's and resolvable to them, one person's with the identity withheld by the platform that saw it, a placement with no person in it, or a public utterance not resolved to a known person. Event → acted by Consumer is available only at the two grains that are a person's act, and a move between journey positions is triggered only by an event resolvable to one person. Aggregate delivery Events do not receive a fabricated actor, and a move of one person never rests on a fact about nobody in particular. An instrument observes exactly one kind of fact; an instrument that observes none is unanchored, and a reading built on it cannot say what it counted.
What goes wrong without it
What a system did and what a person did are different facts, and the two are easily merged — which is why event models separate what was explicitly triggered from what was implicitly observed. A send is not an open; a delivery total is not a set of people. Once an execution record and a behavioural observation are the same kind of thing, every count downstream quietly mixes them, and an audience figure stops being checkable.
What proves it — 2
Each is a gate the build runs: a check inside a ring, a whole ring, or an eval beside them. A build stops at the first that refuses.
- registry integritytyped relationships
Every relationship has declared endpoint kinds and a governed cardinality. - registry integrityevent grain
Every event states the grain it is recorded at, a consumer is named as actor only in an event that is a person's act, and a journey move is triggered only by an event resolvable to one person, so a count of events is never mistaken for a count of people and no move of one person rests on a fact about nobody in particular.
Derived from — 2
- Adobe Experience PlatformXDM ExperienceEvent Class
- Kimball GroupDeclaring the Grain
Kinds it licenses
Relationships it licenses
contains action · triggers event · at grain · acted by consumer · attributed to tactic · captured on · observes event
Where this model stands
Action is the executable step and Event is the observed fact; the path between them is Action triggers Event.
Every event names its grain, and the grain decides what it may evidence. An actor is named only where a person acted: a web visit, an engagement, a submission, a purchase, a referral. Print, mail and broadcast is a placement; a public social conversation is public; social and video engagement is a person's act with the identity withheld, so it keeps its actor. A partner handoff and a fulfilment outcome are facts about one known person that the person did not perform, so they carry no actor and may still move a journey.
A fact the system of record emits about one person - a lookback window closing with nothing done, a score crossing a threshold - is an event with no surface, so an event's capture point is stated where it has one and left unstated where it does not, rather than a surface being invented for it.
Every instrument observes a fact. The instruments that read how the brand is found - a paid or search impression, an assistant's answer and the citation inside it, a crawl, a brand mention - observe facts at placement and public grain, so a reading of visibility closes on its rung the way a move closes on a person, and neither grain is mistaken for the other. Reach stays undeclared for the same reason: distinct people is a person-grain count, and every delivery fact has no person in it.
What it does not claim
No Action record or actor assertion is public until an operational source distinguishes execution records, behavioral events and aggregate delivery; Send email stands as the exemplar.
RUL-004