Give your helper a credential, not your sign-in.

Take or refuse a seat

It can answer an offer sent to them, yes or no. It answers as the person whose credential it is, and only their offers. When it says yes, Assignary checks their clearances again against the day the game starts. A clearance can run out while an offer sits unanswered. Saying no is always open to them. Otherwise a seat could stay with somebody who can’t work it and can’t say so.

Say when they’re free

It can say when they’re not free, too. It sets their hours. It doesn’t answer offers. It changes who can be offered a seat. It never offers anyone a seat. Saying yes ahead of time is a separate job, and only ever the official’s own. The official sets it, or a credential of theirs that answers offers does. Then a matching offer is theirs the moment it’s sent, with no wait for an answer.

It does these only for the person whose credential it is.

Offer a seat

Who gets asked first stays yours to decide. You can give a credential this job, but only if you hold it yourself. A credential never reaches further than the person who issued it. It narrows the moment their own role does. When an offer is turned down or runs out, Assignary offers the seat to the next person who can take it. It doesn’t if you switched re-offers off for that game. The game’s history signs that offer as Assignary, not as you or a credential acting for you.

Withdraw an offer

You can pull back a seat that’s already been offered. Every move on a seat is written down with the name of whoever made it. A credential carries your authority, so a move made through one is written under your name. You answer for what it does. That’s why you choose its jobs and can stop it the next time it asks.

Record who worked

A seat can be marked worked, no-show or excused. The outcome is the record your club can show afterwards. A credential can mark it. The official it’s about can dispute what was marked, and that check matters more than who typed it.

Pay anyone

This is any money going out, to anyone. Only an owner can charge the club, pay for a seat or refund one. That’s the role the club’s treasurer holds. No credential can be given any of these, whatever jobs it has. Nothing is handed a credential for asking for one. A person issues it, for something specific, and takes it back. Revoking it stops its next request, without waiting for it to run out.

A person decides each of these. You can hand the first three to a credential if you choose. Paying stays with the club’s treasurer, because no credential can be given it. Nothing gets into your club by asking Assignary for it. You issue the credential, you pick its jobs, and you take it back. Taking it back stops the very next request it makes.

A helper might be a person, a script or an AI agent. Whichever it is, you hand it a credential rather than your sign-in. It isn’t a copy of your account. It reaches one club, does the jobs you picked and stops on a date you set.

Only what you picked

It gets the jobs you picked, and nothing else. Every time the credential asks for anything, Assignary works out again what it may do. Assignary starts from what your own role allows, and narrows that to the jobs you picked and the one club you issued it for. So the credential can never do more than you can, or more than the narrowest of the three.

It narrows when you do

It drops when your own role does. Nothing is fixed at the moment you issue it. Lower your own role, and every credential you issued can do less the next time it asks. Leave the club, or be taken off it, and they stop working altogether. It borrows your authority rather than keeping a copy of it.

One club

It reaches the one club you issued it for, and no other. The club on the credential is checked against the club being asked about, every time. Without that check, a credential issued for the soccer club could reach the cheer circuit too. Plenty of assigners work for two.

It can’t widen itself

It can’t issue another credential. Only a person can issue a credential, and no credential can be given that job, whatever its other jobs are. So no credential can make another one. Each one traces back to the person who issued it.

Your account stays yours

It’s turned away from signing up, signing in and closing an account. A credential is turned away from your account itself. It can’t sign up, change your details or close the account. It carries your authority for the club’s work, and for nothing else.

Revoked means now

It stops at its next request, not when it runs out. Each time it asks for something, Assignary looks the credential up rather than taking it at face value. So taking it back stops it the very next time. Assignary keeps only a hash of it. You see the credential itself once, when you issue it. A stored copy would be a drawer holding everybody’s keys.

Take it back and the very next request is turned down. You don’t wait for it to run out.

club:view

Read this club’s schedule, crew and roster. Every read that names no other job is answered under it.

offer:respond

Take or refuse a seat it was offered, and set what it says yes to ahead of time.

availability:manage

Say when the official is free, and when they aren’t.

pay:view

Read what this club has paid the official, and their year’s total from it. It can’t read anyone else’s pay.

day:coordinate

Message the whole crew rather than one person.

officials:manage

Edit the roster, record and check credentials, and invite people.

events:manage

Write events, venues and sports, and read the coverage counts.

crew:assign

Offer seats, withdraw them, record who worked, and read anyone’s calendar.

club:audit

Read the club’s history of who did what, without what the club was charged or what it paid.

Knowing who said yes is half of it. The other half is what you can show afterwards: that the person in each seat was cleared for it, and that the game got worked.

Clearances

Cleared means they hold what the seat asks for, on the day it happens. Your club lists what each sport needs by name, like a referee badge or a judging certification. A seat needs every name on its list, not just one. Somebody holds it when the name matches, it hasn’t been revoked, and it hasn’t run out by the moment the game starts. That moment counts, not today. So a badge that runs out next week still covers tomorrow’s match, but not next month’s panel. Assignary checks it three times: when an assigner offers the seat, when Assignary offers it to the next person, and when the official says yes. The last check is there because an offer can sit unanswered while a badge runs out. Saying no is never blocked. Only taking the seat can be. Recording a clearance and verifying it are different acts. Recording shows who typed in what somebody said. Verifying shows a named person who says they went and checked. Assignary never contacts the body that issued it. So the record shows who vouched for it, and when.

Outcomes

A seat can be marked worked, no-show or excused. An assigner marks it, not the official. Officials marking their own seats would make it a different kind of record. Only a seat that was accepted can carry an outcome. Once every accepted seat on a game has one, the game closes by itself. An open seat doesn’t hold it back, because a game that was short a judge still happened. It changes what you owe. Paying for a weekend covers every accepted seat on a game that has started, whether it’s marked worked or not marked at all. A seat marked no-show or excused is refused by name.

The game’s history

Every move on a seat leaves a line saying who made it. Each move gets a line of its own: offered, accepted, turned down, ran out, passed on, withdrawn, marked or disputed. The line names the club, the seat or position it happened to, and who made the move. It’s saved in the same step as the move itself, so a seat somebody took always has a line about it. When Assignary moves a seat by itself, with nobody there, it signs the line as Assignary rather than borrowing anybody’s name. It files the line against the seat, since Assignary has no account ID of its own. A move made through a credential is written under the person who issued it, because it carries their authority. Only an assigner can read it. They see one game’s history beside that game, or the club’s whole history, newest first. Other members don’t see it, because it names every member and what each of them did.

A disagreement

The official can say the record is wrong, and the money waits. Only an assigner writes the outcome, so a dispute is the official’s whole say. It’s their own words, on their own seat. They can dispute a seat only once something is recorded on it. Until then, there’s nothing to disagree with. Raising one stops the money. Paying for the weekend leaves that seat out. Paying for that one seat on its own is refused with a message saying why, rather than quietly doing nothing. Paying over a dispute nobody has read would decide it for whoever wrote the record. A dispute ends one of two ways, and the assigner chooses. They can change the outcome, which answers the dispute at the same time. Or they can read it and leave the record as it stands. A dispute never expires. A timer would decide it for whoever wrote the record, just as paying without reading it would. Only the assigner can read what the official wrote. The rest of the crew can’t.

A receipt

An official can take their own record with them. It’s a signed document about one person in one club, and that person makes it. It lists their offers, accepts, how quickly they answer and whether the work happened. It also lists the clearances they hold that haven’t been withdrawn. Assignary counts every number from its own records, and nobody types one in. No pay figure goes in it at all. It’s a JSON web signature made with Ed25519, a format common tools already read. So checking it takes no code written for Assignary. Whoever they hand it to checks it against the public keys Assignary publishes at its own address. They need nothing else from Assignary. There’s no service to call to check it, because asking the issuer whether it’s telling the truth proves nothing. If Assignary holds no signing key, it refuses to make a receipt. It never issues an unsigned one, which would carry no more weight than a screenshot.

A standing check

Somebody with an account can ask about one clearance later. A signed receipt can’t know that a clearance was pulled the week after it was made. So each clearance in it carries a one-off reference nobody can guess. That reference can be asked about later. The answer is one of four words: valid, expired, revoked or unknown. It comes with the time it was asked, and nothing else: no name, no club, no official, no history. Unknown and revoked are kept apart. Telling somebody a clearance was withdrawn when it never existed would be untrue. There are two limits. Whoever asks needs an Assignary account, so it isn’t open to any passer-by. And valid means recorded, unexpired and not withdrawn. It never means anyone confirmed it with the body that issued it.