Specify by number — a way of working, named the way a part is named.

The number as a term in somebody else's paper.

What a specification is for. A specification names things exactly, so that two parties can agree what was asked for and tell afterwards whether that is what arrived. Materials have had that for a century; parts have had it longer. A way of working has not, and what stopped it was never willingness: there was no name to write. A number is that name.

The mechanism. The line in the document names the number and the edition. A reader who has never heard of this register can resolve it — type the machine form at the verify address — and read the public side of the Card: what the entry covers and what it refuses. Nothing else has to happen for the line to mean something. Whether the work is then done under a licence to that entry is a separate matter, taken up at 04.

How the ten characters are put together is on how the number is built; this page is about what happens when one of them is written into somebody else's paper.

A buyer that writes the number into its paper makes the register load-bearing.

The problem, named. Every other thing this register does needs the register to act first: an entry recorded, an edition sealed, a licence taken. Specifying is the one move that belongs entirely to the buyer — the buyer's own document, on the buyer's own timetable.

Why that matters. A specification is where a requirement becomes something two parties can argue about later. The moment a number is in the paper, the question which way of working has a determinate answer instead of a description each side reads its own way.

What the register wants out of it. Nothing. The register does not ask buyers to write numbers into their papers, and nothing here turns on whether they do. The practice is described because a procurement officer reading this site will ask what the number is for on their side of the desk.

Three things, and the register already keeps all three.

What a line naming a number ties a document to

What the line names	What it binds the document to
The identity	The first eight characters: which entry is meant and no other. It is the part of the number that persists, and it is set out on how the number is built.
The edition	The ninth character: which frozen version of that entry. A pinned edition behaves the same way whenever it is run, or the register says why not.
The Card at that edition	What the entry covers and what it refuses, in the Card's own words, together with the context envelope that says what ground the entry was written for — the cards.

Those three are the extent of it: a specified number binds the document to what the register already holds about the entry, and to nothing else. Writing a number into a tender creates no record here and does not move the count — a citation is not a use.

The tenth character is a check, computed and never typed, and it catches a number mistyped between one document and the next — also on how the number is built.

The line names a way of working. It hands nobody a licence.

It does not license anything by itself. A document that names a number has said what it wants. The right to run the entry is a separate instrument, taken from the register, carrying a term, a field of use and a territory — License. Whoever does the work takes it; the buyer's paper is not it.

It does not stand in for the answer before a use. Before a use, a licensee may ask whether its licence covers this number and this edition, and the register answers from the licence, not about the work. A line in a tender is neither that question nor its answer — the Registry.

It says nothing about the contractor. Naming a number is a statement about a way of working, not about whoever is engaged to work that way. The register makes no finding about competence and holds no record that could be produced as one.

It does not test the work. Whether work was done the way the entry describes is a question for whoever inspects it, under whatever regime already governs the work. The register is asked nothing about it.

A licence is still only a permission. A licence permits a use; it never requires one. The machine's own safety logic refuses whenever it refuses. A number in a specification obliges nobody to run anything, and releases nothing that would otherwise refuse.

The register drafts nothing, confirms nothing and ranks nothing.

It does not write anybody's paper. The register drafts no tender, supplies no clause and reviews nobody's wording. The line shown at 01 illustrates the grammar; nothing on this site is a form of words to be adopted.

It does not confirm that work was done to a number. A check answers whether the number, the edition and the seal are the ones the register issued — nothing about a job, a site, a date or a person (Verify).

It does not rank one number against another. There is no order of merit and no grade: an entry is described by its Card and by nothing else, and two entries in the same family and trade are two entries, not a first and a second.

It confers no mark. A document may say that work is operated under a number, because that is a statement about what was asked for. A claim that anything is approved, endorsed or accredited by this register is not one it supports; the one status word published here is Specified.

It names no buyer. No tender, no authority and no organisation appears on this site in either direction, and a number written into somebody's paper never becomes a thing this register publishes about them.

What a specified number means to procurement, to the person in the seat and to counsel.

For the procurement officer. One line, writable today, in the paper already being written, with the verify address beside it so that whoever reads the tender can resolve the number without asking anyone. It narrows a requirement the way a part number narrows one, and commits the buyer to nothing with this register.

For the person in the seat. Their number can be the one a tender asks for, which travels further than being asked for by name: a document can name a way of working in a place where nobody knows the person. Payment follows use, not citation — a number run once writes a row, and what is owed is worked out from it (Meter).

For counsel. A number in a contract binds to a Card's words at a stated edition, and that edition is sealed and can be checked, so what was meant on the day is recoverable on a later day. The licence is a separate instrument from the specification. Where the prose of a licence and the machine-readable expression of the same permissions would differ, which of the two governs is an open question held with counsel.