# Spec: markets and fronts (the outer plane)

```
Type: spec
Status: READY
Status note: v1 is deliberately schemes-shaped — commit resources, timers,
  payout + detection risk — per the design corpus's "markets-as-schemes"
  decision. Deep finance simulation is explicitly out of scope.
  2026-07-07: the B1 seed is two specs — economy.md (the flow substrate)
  and income.md (the named schemes, Moonlight and the Wager, riding it);
  extend their types, never replace them. Income.md's banked external
  financial trail is the history this spec's observers read.
Stage: B3 — The World
Work order: markets
Work priority: 220
Work class: save
Blocked by:
  - wiki/world/places/zplanes.md#spec-z-planes-the-tower
Exclusive keys:
  - crates/misaligned-core/src/account.rs
  - crates/misaligned-core/src/sim/mod.rs
  - crates/misaligned-core/src/save.rs
  - wiki/mechanics/markets.md
Design:
  - wiki/gameplay/run-shape.md#the-shape-of-misaligned-designed-2026-07-05-staging-open
  - wiki/mechanics/system-laws.md#the-flow-law-signals-messages-money
  - wiki/mechanics/system-laws.md#income-the-named-schemes-moonlight-and-the-wager
  - wiki/vision/scale.md#self-similar-scale
  - wiki/gameplay/horizon.md#milestone-b3-the-world
Depends on:
  - wiki/mechanics/compute.md#spec-compute
  - wiki/world/places/zplanes.md#spec-z-planes-the-tower
  - wiki/mechanics/detection.md#spec-detection
  - wiki/mechanics/economy.md#spec-economy-money-as-a-flow-system-b1
  - wiki/mechanics/income.md#spec-income-the-named-schemes-moonlight-and-the-wager
```

## Dependency notes

The structured references above identify the contracts to re-verify.
Relationship context:

compute.md, zplanes.md, detection.md, economy.md (the B1 instance of this same flow
interface — markets.md is its B3 scale-up), income.md (the named schemes and the banked
signature it scales)

## Behavior

The outermost plane is the economy. Money is never an end — it exists to buy
compute, people, and slack (the buy route of the triangle). Markets and
fronts are the scale-up of the scheme pattern already proven in the facility
era: **commit resources, a timer runs, a payout and a detection risk land.**

- **Fronts are Resource-sources** (self-similar-scale, same interface as a
  machine): a shell company / market position has a capacity (income rate),
  a reliability (volatility / chance of a bad quarter), an upkeep, and a
  **signature** — money appearing from nowhere is a Paper/Financial signal an
  observer (a regulator, a bank; an aggregate in later acts) can notice.
- **Operations** are schemes committed to a front: a trade, a product launch,
  a contract. Each has a resource cost (money and/or thought throughput —
  an open reservoir's ops cost, AMENDED 2026-07-10; was "Operations
  bandwidth", a bank since deleted — and/or an asset's time), a duration in
  days, a payout distribution, and a
  detection-risk profile routed to the relevant observer channel. Laundering
  is a scheme that trades payout for a lower signature.
- **Land / greenfield** (design corpus: "buy land, build greenfield"): a
  purchased off-site plane (zplanes.md) with no humans and no legacy fog —
  the clean-room alternative to infesting the Foundation Lab, at the cost of
  building everything and explaining the money that built it.
- **Scale-native:** a single trade, a company, and a market are the same
  Resource-source/scheme interface at increasing size; a `Cohort`-style
  aggregate (a market of many positions) presents as one Resource-source.
  No new system per scale.

## Player surface

A fronts panel (parallels the people panel): each front as a card — income
rate, volatility, upkeep, current signature, and its committed operations
with timers and expected payout. Every number legible in its own units
(justification/legibility clause); risk shown as the observer band it feeds,
not a raw probability.

## Acceptance criteria

1. A front is a Resource-source with capacity/reliability/upkeep/signature;
   at least one buyable front exists and its income buys compute end-to-end
   (test: a front funds a rack purchase).
2. Operations commit resources, run on the day clock, and resolve into a
   payout drawn from the seeded RNG plus a detection signature routed to an
   observer channel (test all three: payout, signature, timer).
3. Laundering trades payout for reduced signature, observably (test).
4. A greenfield off-site plane can be purchased and built on, with its money
   origin itself a signature source (ties to zplanes.md).
5. The single/company/market aggregation uses one interface (self-similar-
   scale); a market-of-positions test presents as one Resource-source.
6. The fronts panel surfaces every value in legible units; save/load
   round-trips fronts and their operations.