8. Communication, Attention and Today

Walk through the visual explanation →

Communication and effects

A Message belongs to a scoped conversation. An Update describes a production announcement targeted at an eligible audience. Following optional activity does not automatically make someone a private conversation participant.

A domain mutation can admit notification or delivery intent. Background processing and external providers then attempt the effect. Queue admission is not successful delivery. A public diagram that labels the queue as “sent” would obscure an important failure boundary.

Attention is current actionable work

Attention projects currently eligible obligations from source domains. It is not simply unread notification history. A message may be unread without requiring an action; a required workflow review may remain actionable after a notification has been read.

Source records determine completion and current access. Delayed projection work can lag, and coverage can be partial. A missing projected item therefore cannot automatically establish that no source obligation exists. A projection should make its coverage and failure state understandable rather than presenting an authoritative-looking empty screen.

Today composes

Today combines authorized assignments, days, schedules, call sheets, activity, availability and Attention into a useful read model. It does not own canonical work records. Opening it does not acknowledge a call sheet, mark a message read or complete a review.

Actions return to the owning domain. Source readers retain current authority. Candidate indexes and caches can help discovery and performance, but they are not permission truth.

Performance and correctness

Bounded reads, initial data and refresh improve the experience. They introduce limits: pagination, stale hints and partial failures need explicit handling. The current documentation records local verification of source composition and access boundaries. It does not establish production latency or every provider effect.

The lesson is a design boundary rather than a performance boast. Compose enough information to help a person act, then preserve the source domain’s authority over what the action means.