Define the eligibility path for a vendor with no vault #32
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Surfaced by a skeptical review pass over the closed decisions. Three closed tickets leave a hole
between them.
The vault makes eligibility accrue from retailer acceptances of typed vault documents,
and makes computed expiry state feed audience rule evaluation. Entitlement gives free and
lapsed vendors no vault — they upload per RFP instead. Visibility makes eligibility the
input to rule-defined audiences.
Nothing says what a free vendor's per-RFP upload actually is, and both readings break something:
vendor can never become qualified with a retailer and is systematically absent from every
rule-defined group. That is access-gating by the back door, it contradicts tools, never access,
and it is entitlement gating retailer-facing correctness — which the entitlement decision
itself forbids in as many words.
expiry state has to be computed for documents that live outside the vault, so "the vault is the
paid artifact" gets blurry.
Resolve: what a free vendor's per-RFP document is; whether it is typed against the catalogue;
whether a retailer can accept it and whether that acceptance creates eligibility; where its expiry
state lives; and what exactly a paying vendor gets that a free one does not, restated so it survives
this case.
Test the answer against the principle the entitlement decision set: entitlement gates vendor-facing
convenience, never retailer-facing correctness. A retailer's view of who is qualified must not
depend on who is paying us.
Also settle the adjacent asymmetry it exposes: a free vendor bidding to the same retailer five times
uploads the same certificate five times. That friction is the intended upgrade pressure — confirm it
is friction and not exclusion.
Parent: #1
christian referenced this issue2026-08-02 15:23:58 +00:00
Resolution — dissolved by the pricing reversal
This ticket existed because the vault accrued eligibility from typed vault documents while
entitlement gave free vendors no vault, leaving a free vendor unable to ever become
qualified — access-gating by the back door.
There is no free vendor. The pricing structure puts the durable vault, cross-retailer
reuse, and the acceptance graph in the $100/mo base tier, so every vendor able to participate at
all has a vault. The contradiction has no subject.
What was worth preserving, and was carried into the pricing decision: eligibility must never
depend on subscription state. A lapsed vendor stays eligible, is still selected into rule-defined
audiences by group rules, and simply meets the subscribe wall. The retailer's view of who is
qualified never depends on who is paying us.
Closed as dissolved rather than answered.