The last post explained the ideas behind the Secure Job Envelope. Ideas are easier to judge on a real job, so this one walks a single job through it, start to finish.
The job comes from the worked examples in the public repo, which has two pieces. The bracket traveler file is the job as written down, and Steps 1 and 2 use it. The walkthrough script then takes a pared-down version of the same bracket — same buyer, part, material, quantities, and shipping terms, but fewer details (no drawing rev, finish, tolerances, or notes, and a different need-by date) — and quotes, amends, re-quotes, and awards it. Steps 3 to 6 use the script's numbers. The script composes a fresh job each time it runs, so its fingerprint isn't the one in Step 1, but every rule it exercises is the same. The companies are made up. The steps are what the code actually does, and the walkthrough stops with an error if any step behaves differently.
Step 1: the buyer writes the job down
Northline Equipment, a made-up buyer in Reno, needs a bracket. Their traveler says:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Part | CNC bracket, part number NL-BRK-4410, drawing rev C |
| Material | 6061-T6 plate, 6.35 mm (1/4") |
| Quantity | 250 target, with price breaks at 100, 250, and 500 |
| Processes | Laser, CNC mill, deburr |
| Finish and tolerance | Brushed; ±0.13 mm unless noted |
| Notes | Break all edges. No tooling marks on show face. |
| Terms | Need-by date set; shipping terms FOB; not ITAR |
That's enough for a seller to price it without calling to ask what material it is or how many. So the file is at the level called Quoteable. Nobody clicked a "ready" button. The file has what quoting needs, and both sides' software can see that.
The file also has a fingerprint. For this exact traveler it's a long string beginning sha384:6a0ed45f. Any correct implementation, on anyone's computer, computes the same one. If your copy fingerprints to anything else, it isn't the same job.
Step 2: what a courier could say about it
Before Northline and any seller agree to talk, a courier — a service helping the job find capacity — is allowed to describe it like this: a CNC bracket, 6061-T6 plate, laser, mill, and deburr, brushed, 250 pieces, needed by a date, not ITAR. It can also say how many quotes there are and what level the job is at.
It may not say "Northline," "Reno," "NL-BRK-4410," "rev C," the tolerance, the notes, or any price. A test in the repo fails if a name, a contact, a price, a part number, or an address from this sample shows up in that view.
Step 3: the first quote
Summit Fabrication, also made up, quotes it:
| Quantity | Unit price |
|---|---|
| 100 | $18.50 |
| 250 | $14.20 |
| 500 | $11.75 |
There's $350 of one-time setup (NRE) and a 21-day lead time. The quote records the fingerprint of the job it priced, and the reference tools fill that in from the job in hand; nobody types it. The job is now Awardable: one quote bound to the current revision.
Prices in the file are stored in whole cents. $14.20 is written as 1420, so no two programs can round it differently.
Step 4: the buyer changes one thing
Northline changes the shipping terms from FOB to EXW. These are Incoterms, standard codes for who pays freight and where responsibility for the goods passes from seller to buyer. Under EXW ("ex works"), the buyer collects the parts at the seller's door. No new drawing, no new quantity. Who pays freight and where the risk passes are different now, that's all.
That's enough. The revision goes up, the fingerprint changes, and Summit's quote is marked stale: zero quotes bound to the current job, one stale. The job drops back to Quoteable.
This is the part people push back on: it's only the shipping terms. But who pays freight changes what a fair price is, and a quote is a promise about a specific job. The envelope doesn't decide which changes "matter." It makes every change visible, and lets the seller decide whether their price still stands.
Step 5: a second shop quotes the new version
Red River Machining, made up as well, with ISO 9001 and AS9100, quotes the amended job:
| Quantity | Unit price |
|---|---|
| 100 | $17.90 |
| 250 | $13.65 |
| 500 | $11.20 |
There's $280 of NRE and an 18-day lead time. This quote binds to the new fingerprint. The job is Awardable again, with one bound quote and one stale one, and both sides can see which is which.
Step 6: the award, and the lock
Northline awards Red River's quote at 250 pieces and adds the two things an award needs: the ship-to (their receiving dock) and the operations (laser, then mill, then deburr). The job is now Executable, and it locks.
Two details matter here:
- The award doesn't change the fingerprint. The fingerprint covers what was priced. Awarding, adding the ship-to, and listing operations happen after pricing, so Red River's quote stays bound to exactly what they quoted.
- The locked job refuses edits. In the example, the buyer tries to change the shipping terms back to FOB after the award. Nothing happens. The revision stays where it was. A change after award is a new conversation between the two shops, not a quiet edit to a job someone has already scheduled.
Between two real desks
The walkthrough runs on one desk to keep it short. The repo's two-desk demo runs the same kind of job between two separate desks, a buyer's and a seller's, and there every hop moves sealed: encrypted to the shop receiving it, so anything in between carries something it can't read. Each side checks the fingerprint for itself on arrival instead of taking the sender's word for it. The demo also flips a single byte in a sealed file to show it gets refused.
Nobody logs into anyone else's system. There's no shared database, no broker holding the customer list, and no platform account. The file is the whole conversation.
What this example doesn't show
It's an example. The companies are made up, and no two outside shops have traded a real job this way yet. The drawing itself doesn't travel in the file; the traveler records the drawing rev. Nothing in this walkthrough or the two-desk demo is signed: signatures are built and tested in the reference libraries but not used here yet, and the award and ship-to aren't covered by them at all yet. Flow, Part 7 has the full list of what it doesn't do yet.
If you have a developer, the whole walkthrough runs with one command from the repo. If you'd rather see it on one of your own jobs, with your names left out, that's the conversation we'd like to have.