17 · FINALITY
Failure Domains
STATUS
ACTIVE
SPEC
NIL-006
VERSION
0.6.1
UPDATED
2025-11-22
Terminal Failure States
NIL defines four terminal failure states an obligation may reach prior to finality:
| State | Cause |
|---|---|
| EXPIRED | Execution window elapsed without assignment |
| REJECTED | Terms could not be validated at compilation |
| UNROUTABLE | No corridor exists with sufficient capacity |
| REBALANCE_REQUIRED | Local finality achieved, but exposure could not be offset within the epoch |
Containment
Each failure state is scoped to the obligation and the domains directly party to it. Failures do not cascade to unrelated obligations sharing a domain unless they reflect a structural condition — such as corridor exhaustion — in which case subsequent obligations along that same corridor independently reach the same state until capacity is restored.
Failure states are surfaced as first-class obligation states, not generic errors, because they are meaningful signal for routing future intents and for operators monitoring corridor and domain health.