DOCUMENTS & PROJECTS

The Watcher

The Watcher is the one place on a project that answers a single question: what needs me right now? Missing register entries, clocks running, decisions waiting and documents that disagree. Everything else lives in its register.

Overview

The Watcher is an attention feed, not a register. A register answers “what is the state of X?” — every claim, every variation, every obligation, whatever its status. The Watcher answers “what needs me right now?” A row is in the feed because it needs a decision from you, and it leaves when the decision is made.

That gives the feed one hard contract: the badge count always equals the number of rows. There is no separate unread state to clear, nothing to mark as seen, and no inbox to keep tidy. If the badge says four, four things need a decision. Clear them and the badge goes; there is no way to make the number lie.

You reach it from the Knowledge band in the project sidebar — not the Registers band, because it is not one. The full registers keep their own routes and the Watcher never duplicates them; it links into them. See Registers for the state-of-the-project side of the same records.

The Watcher on a project — the unread count on the sidebar row matching the number of rows in the feed, with grouped headings running down the page: Missing from registers with a Recovery finding, On the clock showing a notice clock with days left, Needs a decision on an incoming claim, and Conflicts tagged Detected conflict.

Quiet is the goal

An empty Watcher reads “Nothing needs you right now” — Alloovium is still checking missing register entries, notice clocks, claims and contract conflicts in the background. They appear here only when they need a decision, so an empty feed is a result, not a gap.

What lands in the feed

Rows arrive grouped by the kind of attention they want, so a scan reads as a shape rather than a list.

Group	What it holds
Missing from registers	Findings from the Recovery radar — events shaped like money with no register row behind them. Covered in depth below.
On the clock	Notice clocks currently running. Each row says "notice clock running" with the time remaining — "N days left", or "due today" on the last day.
Needs a decision	Claims waiting on your response, claims in dispute, and claims Alloovium registered from a document that need confirming — those read "auto-registered — confirm it".
Conflicts	Documents that disagree with each other. Each row is tagged either Contract set or Detected conflict so you can see whether it is a known set or something Alloovium found.
Lapsed — review now	Windows that have already closed. The row states "lapsed N days ago" and the date the window closed, because a lapsed window is still a decision — pursue it or record that you did not.
Their clock, their silence	Notices you served through Exchange that nobody has acknowledged. Grouped alongside Served, not acknowledged.
Today's record	Today’s site diary hasn’t been filed — the scheduled call went unanswered, and the day stays off the record unless you call the diary line back or open the diary yourself.

Groups render only when they have rows in them. The feed never shows an empty heading, so the page length is a fair proxy for how much is outstanding.

The Recovery radar

Events shaped like money with no register row — directed work without a variation, delay days without a notice, revisions and dockets nobody claimed.

The Recovery radar is the part of the Watcher that goes looking. Everything else in the feed reacts to a record that exists; the radar hunts for the record that should exist and does not. Money is rarely lost on a job by being refused — it is lost by never being claimed, and the radar is the sweep for exactly that.

It used to be a standalone Recovery register with its own sidebar row. It is now a group inside the Watcher, under the heading Missing from registers — because a finding is not a state to browse, it is a decision waiting on you.

The four kinds of finding

Finding	What it means
Directed work — no variation	Someone directed work that reads as a change, and no variation was raised against it.
Delay evidence — no notice	Evidence of delay days on the project record with no delay notice served.
Revision change — no variation link	A drawing or document revision changed scope, and nothing links it to a variation.
Docket — not in a claim	A docket sitting on the project that has never appeared on a progress claim.

Notice window and confidence

A finding is only useful if you know how long you have. Every finding therefore carries a notice window state and a confidence, and the row says which in plain language.

Notice window	Reading
Window open	There is still time to act, with no computed end date on the row.
Window open — due {date}	Time remains and the row shows the date it runs out — "notice due {date}".
Window lapsed	The row reads "notice opportunity may have lapsed". Review it anyway — see Lapsed below.
No time bar computed	Alloovium could not compute a deadline from the contract, so the row says "no verified deadline" rather than inventing one.

Confidence is High or Medium, and it is stated on the row rather than hidden in a score. A Medium finding is a prompt to look, not an assertion that money is owed — the radar surfaces candidates and you make the call.

Acting on a finding

Each finding offers the next real step rather than a generic open: Review candidate to see the evidence behind it, Log delay for a delay finding, and Open variations or Open claims to take it into the register where it belongs.

A Recovery radar finding inside the Watcher's Missing from registers group — a Directed work, no variation row with High confidence, a Window open, due date chip reading notice due, the Review candidate and Open variations actions, and the Not recoverable dismissal beside them.

Dismissal is a recorded decision

The dismissal action is Not recoverable, and it is deliberately not a delete. It asks Why not? and will not proceed without a reason. On confirm the toast says it plainly: “Dismissed — the reason remains on the audit trail.”

That matters six months later. A finding you dismissed in March with “covered by the lump-sum inclusion” is a defensible position; a finding that silently vanished is a hole in the story. Dismissing removes the row from your attention, not from the record.

The scan is read-only

The radar runs automatically on a nightly sweep, so findings appear without anyone pressing anything. You can also re-check on demand with Check again, which re-reads the last stretch of project records — the hint on the control states the guarantee: “This only reads project records; nothing is created or sent.”

The strip tells you how current the picture is
A line above the group reads "Recovery records checked {date}", so you always know how stale the findings are before you trust them.
Press Check again to re-read
The strip switches to "Checking records…" while the sweep runs. It reads existing project records only — no notice is drafted, no message is sent, nothing is registered.
Findings update in place
A rescan refreshes the findings it already raised rather than raising them again, so running it twice never doubles the list. Resolved items drop out; new ones appear.

Safe to run in front of the client

A scan changes nothing on the project. It creates no variation, serves no notice and sends no email — it reads what is already there and reports what is missing. If it is worth checking, it is worth checking now.

The assistant can read the findings too

Recovery findings are exposed to the AI assistant through a read-only, permission-filtered lookup, so “what money have we left on the table this month?” is a question you can ask in chat and get a grounded answer to. The assistant can read the findings; it cannot dismiss them. See AI Assistant.

Clocks and silence

Two failure modes the feed exists to catch: a clock you are running out of, and a clock running against someone who has gone quiet.

Served, not acknowledged

When you serve a notice through Exchange and the other side says nothing, the Watcher raises it under Their clock, their silence and Served, not acknowledged. The row states the position without softening it: “served via Exchange — no acknowledgment in N days — chase it; the statutory clock doesn’t wait.”

It covers the notices where silence costs you something — an EOT notice, a Payment schedule, or a Variation notice. Delivery is not receipt, and a served notice nobody answered is not a closed loop.

Lapsed — review now

A window that has closed does not disappear from the feed. It moves to Lapsed — review now, showing how long ago it lapsed and the date the window closed. The point is not to make you feel bad about a missed date — it is that a lapsed window still needs a decision recorded against it, either a pursuit on another footing or a deliberate note that it was reviewed and not pursued.

A clock chip is not a reminder

“N days left” and “due today” are contractual, not administrative. Missing a notice time-bar does not cost a late fee, it costs the entitlement — which is why these rows sit at the top of the feed and stay there until they are answered.

Acting on a row

Every row carries the actions that actually close it, and nothing else. Three verbs cover most of the feed.

Action	What it does
Open in register	Jumps straight to the underlying row in the register that owns it — the claim, the variation, the obligation. The Watcher hands you off; it does not hold a second copy.
Review	Opens the item and its evidence so you can make the call with the context in front of you.
Not a variation	Records that the flagged event is not a change. Requires a second tap to confirm — the row asks "Sure? Tap again".
Dismiss	Sets the row aside as reviewed. Also a two-tap confirm, and also recorded rather than deleted.

Both dismissive verbs are waivers with a reason, and the toast says so: “Waived — the register keeps the decision on record.” The reason is stored against the register row as Waived from the attention feed — reviewed, not a variation or …window lapsed, reviewed and not pursued, so the register can always show who decided what and on what basis.

Nothing leaves the feed silently

There is no hide, no snooze and no clear-all. Every exit from the Watcher is either a decision taken in the register or a waiver with a reason attached to it — because a “we looked at it and let it go” you cannot evidence is the same as never having looked.

Watcher, registers and Today

Three surfaces, three different questions. Getting them straight is most of learning the product.

Surface	Scope	Question it answers
Today	Every project you touch, personal to you.	"What is my day?" — the calendar, the queue of items waiting on you, and what changed overnight across all your work.
The Watcher	One project, everyone on it.	"What needs a decision on this job right now?" — a live feed that empties as decisions are made.
A register	One record type on one project.	"What is the state of X?" — every claim, variation or obligation, whatever its status, including the settled ones.

So a claim awaiting your response is a row in the Watcher and a row in the claims register — but they are doing different jobs. Answer it and it leaves the Watcher; it stays in the register forever, now marked answered. See Today for the cross-project view.