Practice succession — a practice keeps paying its Source after it changes hands.

One registered entry, and one licence to whoever takes the practice on.

An entry and a licence, never one object. The entry is a reference built from the practice's own records — the calculations, the reports, the specifications, the job files, the procedures — mined and ratified into something a system can be asked, and numbered once. The licence is the separate instrument by which a successor takes it on. The entry says what the way of working is; the licence says what a successor may do with it.

The mechanism, in order. The records are inventoried and the reference is built from them — the work Strategic Agent does on the Records track, set out on Professions. A number issues, and the Card says what it covers and what it refuses. The successor's licence pins the edition current at the handover, so what passes is a frozen version of the method and not a moving one.

What the practice is, and what the entry is. A practice is a business: people, premises, a client list, obligations, a name over a door. The entry is one thing taken out of it, the way the work was done, and selling the first has never carried the second in any form a document could name.

The Source does not change hands. The Source is the professional whose records the reference was built from, and a handover does not move that: the name stays on the Card, the number beside it and never instead of it, and the agreement behind it is with Even Steven. A successor is a licensee, never a Source.

The method was the thing the buyer wanted, and it had no address.

The problem, named. A practice changing hands is the sharpest ordinary case of a way of working leaving the person who made it. The files transfer, because files are paper. The method transfers in the two ways it ever has: the successor reads the files and works it out, or the principal stays on a while and explains it. Neither is a record, neither can be named in a document, and neither pays anybody once the handshake is done.

What the register adds. Three things a sale by itself cannot carry. An address: the method is a numbered entry, so a document can name it. An edition: it is frozen at a stated version, so what the successor holds does not drift. A count: every use writes a row against the number, so what is owed to the Source follows use rather than a single price agreed on one day. The count is the economic record, and it is on Meter.

Why it belongs on Records. A professional's work is already written down: the obligation to keep it comes with the licence to practise. Nobody is interviewed to build a Records entry — the paper is there already, and how it is mined and ratified is on Professions.

One number, one pinned edition, one licence, and a count read from both ends.

What the register holds when a practice is registered and licensed on

What is recorded	What it carries
The reference	One number for the practice's reference, on the Records track, with the Card that says what it covers and what it refuses. The Card's Kind field reads record-derived — the register's word for a reference built from an existing body of records rather than a recorded session (Professions).
The edition at the handover	The frozen version the licence pins. Which change earns a new edition and which earns a new number is on how the number is built.
The licence to the successor	Which of the three kinds it is, and the actions that kind permits, named one by one.
Term, field of use, territory	The three limits every licence carries, stated on the paper and in the machine-readable expression of it.
The Source's conditions	What the professional put on what is made of their records, carried on the Card and written into the licence so it travels — Protect.
The count	Every serve counted at source, in one row that both sides read — Meter.
The status word	Specified, which is the one status word this register publishes.

None of that is new machinery. It is the ordinary apparatus of the register — an entry, an edition, a licence, a count — pointed at one situation with an ending built into it: somebody is leaving, and those four are what carry the method across.

Execution for the successor's own systems; derivative if they build on top.

Execution. The right to run the reference, with the actions the successor's systems may take named one by one inside the licence rather than left to a word. On the Records track the unit is a serve, and the count is taken there. The kinds are on License, and each action is defined on Rights.

Derivative. Where the successor builds its own reference on top of the one it licensed, the licence is derivative and the action it names is DERIVE. The register records the ancestry declared, as a recorded declaration and not a finding. What the register can show about a derived model is what was licensed for it, and nothing about what the model now contains.

Learning. A learning licence rests on the Source's own fourth consent, given per person per set. Where the professional has not given it, none issues for that entry — the four consents are on Rights.

The endings do not move when a practice does. Under an execution licence: It stops for new work at once; a job already underway finishes. Because a serve is the unit here, that takes effect at the next serve. Under a learning or derivative licence: Material used to build a model comes out at the model's next revision, and that date is stated to the person before they sign. The register never claims a model has forgotten anyone. The rule follows the kind, not the transaction.

The register does not value a practice, broker its sale, or hold its files.

It does not value a practice. No figure of any kind belongs to this register: not a price, not a worth, not a rate. What is owed under a licence is worked out from the count, and the rate sits on Even Steven's covenant.

It does not broker a sale. It does not find a successor, introduce the parties, hold money between them or take part in the terms they agree. A licence sits beside a sale agreement and does not replace it; neither instrument governs the other.

It does not hold the files. Registering a skill set does not require giving up custody of the material it was made from. The practice's records stay where they are, under the retention obligations they already carry; the register holds the entry, not the pile.

It does not take the skill. You own your skill, always and forever. A sale licenses what is made of the skill and never reaches the skill itself; the Source keeps being paid from the count while the licence runs; and the withdrawal rule for the kind stands after the handover exactly as before.

It makes no finding about competence. An entry passing on says nothing about either party. This register records what was asserted, who asserted it, on what date, and what evidence was produced with it. It records that it has not tested the assertion. It does not decide who owns anything.

It does not answer what passes on death. What happens to an entry, and to the money under it, when a Source dies is written in the agreement with Even Steven. It is a question for counsel.

What it means on each side of the handover, and to counsel.

For the two parties to the handover. The retiring professional keeps being paid after the handshake: a sale is one payment on one day, while a licence is a term, and under it the count runs for as long as the successor's systems use the reference — the Source named on the Card, named on the licence, holding the ending for the kind. The successor holds a licence naming exactly which edition it has and what its systems may do with it: a pinned edition behaves the same way whenever it is run, and a named action may be done rather than argued for later.

For counsel. The licence is a separate instrument from the sale agreement and does not stand in for it. What the register warrants is its own acts: the entry it recorded, the edition it sealed, the count it took, the stop it honours. It warrants nothing about title to the records, what a client's confidence permits, or whether an employed professional could license what they licensed — whose documents a practice's files are is open, and it is on the legal position.