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Approval Workflow

The problem​

A document needs review and sign-off from multiple people — legal, finance, management — before it becomes official.

The solution​

IntentText has three keywords for the approval chain: approve: → sign: → freeze:.

title: Service Agreement — Acme Corp & GlobalTech Industries
summary: Annual IT support contract
meta: | type: contract | domain: legal | track: true

section: Terms
text: Provider shall deliver monthly IT support services...
text: Payment within 30 days of invoice.

section: Approval Chain

// Step 1: Approvals (review, no crypto)
approve: Legal review complete | by: Sarah Chen | role: General Counsel | at: 2026-03-20
approve: Finance approved | by: James Miller | role: CFO | at: 2026-03-21
approve: Management sign-off | by: Lisa Park | role: CTO | at: 2026-03-21

// Step 2: Integrity hash seals (tamper-evident)
sign: Ahmed Al-Rashid | role: CEO | at: 2026-03-22T10:00:00Z | hash: sha256:a1b2c3d4
sign: Maria Santos | role: COO, GlobalTech | at: 2026-03-22T14:30:00Z | hash: sha256:e5f6a7b8

// Step 3: Freeze (seal the document)
freeze: | status: locked | at: 2026-03-22T15:00:00Z | hash: sha256:f9a0b1c2

track: | by: legal@acme.co

Step by step​

1. Enable tracking​

meta: | type: contract | track: true

track: true in metadata enables the trust chain. Without it, approve:, sign:, and freeze: still parse, but the document isn't formally tracked.

2. Record approvals​

approve: Legal review complete | by: Sarah Chen | role: General Counsel | at: 2026-03-20

Each approve: block records:

  • What was approved (the content)
  • Who approved it (by:)
  • Their role (role:)
  • When (at:)

Add as many approve: blocks as your workflow requires. Common chains:

  • Legal → Finance → Management
  • Technical → Security → Architecture
  • Author → Editor → Publisher

3. Add digital signatures​

sign: Ahmed Al-Rashid | role: CEO | at: 2026-03-22T10:00:00Z | hash: sha256:a1b2c3d4

sign: records a SHA-256 hash of the document content at the time of signing. This is machine-verifiable: if anyone changes the content, the hash won't match.

4. Freeze the document​

freeze: | status: locked | at: 2026-03-22T15:00:00Z | hash: sha256:f9a0b1c2

freeze: seals the document. The hash covers all content above the freeze: block. After freezing, any edit to the content invalidates the seal.

Using the CLI​

The seal command automates steps 2–4:

intenttext seal contract.it --signer "Ahmed Al-Rashid" --role "CEO"

This:

  1. Computes a content hash
  2. Adds a sign: block
  3. Adds a freeze: block
  4. Writes the updated document

Querying approvals​

# Find all approved documents
intenttext query ./contracts --type approve --format table

# Who approved what?
intenttext query ./contracts --type approve --by "Sarah Chen" --format json

# Find unsigned documents (have approve but no freeze)
intenttext ask ./contracts "Which contracts have approvals but no freeze?" --format text

Next steps​