---
slug: complete_contract
name: Complete Contract
one_liner: "A rule-set that specifies an action for every contingency in advance, needing no external gap-filler — the fully-enumerated pole of the completeness axis whose dual is incomplete_contract."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [structural, economic, systemic]
origin_domain: contract_theory
alternate_origin_domains: [law, computer_science, mechanism_design]
aliases: [complete_contingent_contract, fully_specified_agreement, comprehensive_contract, exhaustive_rule_set]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-01 dualization, sub-flavor 1a) — the completeness dual of `incomplete_contract` along the gap/no-gap (enumerate-everything vs leave-gaps) axis. Discovered in the op-01 full sweep 2026-07-03. Verified absent via search_prime + slug check; adjacent `complete_enumeration` EXISTS and is a live collision risk (flagged below). STATUS: HOLD — pending owner curation."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). Did NOT go through Phase-A triage. SI/SF/similarity grades are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT yet written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs incomplete_contract / complete_enumeration / mechanism_design to confirm it is a distinct structure and not a domain-instance of complete_enumeration; if kept, draw the sibling edge to incomplete_contract and the overlap/parent edge to complete_enumeration; sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 3
  domain_breadth: 3
  structural_abstraction: 3
  transfer_evidence: 2
  reasoning: 'The rule "specify an action for every possible contingency in advance, so no external mechanism is ever needed to fill a gap" is a real structural condition on a rule-set — total coverage of the contingency space — and in that abstract form it is medium-neutral: a total function defined on every input, a state machine with a transition for every state-input pair, and a fully-specified protocol are the same completeness condition. That gives it a middling structural_abstraction of 3. But the concept lives mostly as a *theoretical limit* in contract theory (the complete contingent contract that the whole incomplete-contracts literature exists to say is unattainable), so transfer_evidence is only 2: the honest cross-domain instances (total functions, exhaustive case analysis, fully-specified protocols) are real but the term itself is heavily economics/law-bound and is often invoked precisely as the idealization that does not occur. Domain breadth 3, composite 3 — transferable in principle, but its named home is narrow and its status is partly that of a foil.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: incomplete_contract
  similarity: 0.74
structural_framed:
  label: mixed-framed
  aggregate: 0.45
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.4, evaluative_weight: 0.2, institutional_origin: 0.6, human_practice_bound: 0.5, import_vs_recognize: 0.4}
  rationale: 'Complete contract inherits its dual''s frame. The bare structure — a rule-set with an action for every contingency, needing no gap-filler — is a medium-neutral completeness condition, but the live concept is institution-bound: it is defined within contract theory and law as the idealized agreement, and its meaning is largely relational to the (unattainable-in-practice) claim the incomplete-contracts literature is built on. institutional_origin is high (0.6) and human_practice_bound moderate (0.5); evaluative weight is low because completeness is not itself good or bad, only a coverage property. Aggregate ~0.45 — mixed-framed, slightly less framed than stated_preference but clearly not a pure structural prime in its native form.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Complete Contract

## Core Idea

A complete contract is the structural pattern of *a rule-set that specifies an action for every contingency in advance*, so that whatever state of the world arises, the rule-set already contains a determinate prescription and no external mechanism is ever called upon to fill a gap. The defining move is *total coverage of the contingency space*: every possible future state is mapped, ahead of time, to a specified outcome, obligation, or transition. It is one pole of a single structural axis, *completeness of specification* — enumerate-everything versus leave-gaps — whose opposite pole is `incomplete_contract` (a rule-set that deliberately leaves some contingencies unspecified and designates a handler to fill them). The complete contract is the *no-gap, self-contained* pole; the incomplete contract is the *acknowledged-gap-plus-gap-filler* pole. What each prime names is which side of the completeness axis a rule-set occupies.

Three commitments define the pattern and generate its characteristic trade. First, *exhaustive contingency enumeration*: the space of relevant future states is treated as fully mappable, and every state in it is assigned a prescription. Second, *self-containment*: because there are no gaps, the rule-set needs no residual authority, no renegotiation, no default doctrine, no arbiter, and no good-faith gap-filling — it decides every case internally. Third, *ex-ante determinacy*: the outcome in any state is fixed at authoring time, not discovered later. The trade is sharp and is the prime's diagnostic fingerprint. The payoff is *certainty and dispute-freedom*: with no gap, there is nothing to renegotiate, no discretion to abuse, no hold-up, no ambiguity to litigate — every party knows exactly what happens in every state, and enforcement is mechanical. The cost is *the enumeration burden and its brittleness*: exhaustively specifying every contingency is prohibitively costly, often impossible given bounded foresight and unverifiable states, and a rule-set that claims completeness but has in fact missed a state fails silently or catastrophically when that state arrives, because it has no gap-filler to fall back on. The prime is the clean statement of that trade — *total certainty at the price of total specification* versus the incomplete contract's *cheap flexibility at the price of an entrusted gap* — abstracted from any particular legal or economic setting.

Read structurally, the pattern is one object wherever a rule-set aims to leave nothing to later discretion. In *contract theory and law* it is the *complete contingent contract*: the idealized agreement that specifies each party's obligation in every state of the world, the foil against which the whole incomplete-contracts literature defines itself. In *computer science* it is a *total function* — one defined on every input, with no undefined case — and a *fully-specified state machine* with a transition for every state-input pair, so execution never reaches an unhandled condition. In *protocol and standards design* it is an *exhaustive specification* that fixes behavior for every message and error, needing no implementation-defined fallback. In *mechanism design* it is a mechanism whose rules pin down an outcome for every profile of reports, requiring no ex-post adjudication. Across all of these the recognizable move is the same: cover the whole contingency space in advance so that the rule-set is self-contained and no gap-filler is ever invoked — buying determinacy and dispute-freedom at the price of an enumeration that may be unaffordable or, worse, quietly incomplete.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by op-01 dualization (sub-flavor 1a) as the completeness dual of `incomplete_contract` along the enumerate-everything-vs-leave-gaps axis, in the op-01 full sweep on 2026-07-03. The pair-completion signal is strong and textbook: "complete contract" is the established antonym of incomplete_contract in contract theory (Hart–Moore and the incomplete-contracts program are literally organized around the impossibility of the complete contract), so the dual is a named, well-attested concept, not a coinage.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: it is the canonical, literature-attested dual of an accepted prime, it names a genuine structural axis (completeness of specification / total coverage of a contingency space), and that axis abstracts cleanly beyond law into total functions, fully-specified state machines, and exhaustive protocols — so there is real cross-domain structure, and keeping it balances the lattice (the corpus has the gap-leaving pole but not the no-gap pole). The manifest flags **two specific risks**, both serious. (1) **Collision with `complete_enumeration`, which already exists.** A complete contract *is* a complete enumeration of the contingency space plus a prescription per case — the overlap is not cosmetic. Kurt must decide whether complete_contract is (a) a genuinely distinct prime (the completeness condition *specifically as applied to a rule-set / obligation-assignment*, i.e., a self-contained no-gap-filler agreement), (b) merely the contract-theory *instance* of `complete_enumeration` and thus a domain-instance that should be cut or redirected, or (c) better folded as a facet of the incomplete_contract page (poles of one axis). This is the load-bearing decision. (2) **Econ domain-instance risk**: the sharpest, most-cited sense of "complete contract" is heavily economics/law-bound and, tellingly, functions mostly as an *idealization that does not occur in practice* — the whole point of the incomplete-contracts program is that complete contracts are unattainable. A prime whose primary status is "the theoretical limit that is invoked to be denied" is worth scrutinizing: is it a structure that recurs, or a foil? The SI/SF grades reflect this — composite 3, transfer_evidence only 2, aggregate ~0.45 (mixed-framed) — it is notably more frame-tinted and narrower than a clean structural dual like eager_evaluation. Recommend Kurt weigh the complete_enumeration overlap first; if complete_contract survives that screen as distinct, the domain-instance concern is manageable.

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `complete_enumeration` (the primary collision), `incomplete_contract` (the dual), and `mechanism_design` before incorporating; resolve the complete_enumeration relationship explicitly (distinct prime with an overlap edge, redirect/merge into complete_enumeration, or fold into incomplete_contract as a pole). If kept as a distinct prime, draw the sibling edge to `incomplete_contract` (antonym/mutual) and the appropriate subsumption or overlap edge to `complete_enumeration`. Sync the one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge.
