Promises

Promises are commitments by one party to perform a specified action or to refrain from acting in the future. They depend on trust that the promisor will fulfill the obligation and that the promisee can expect the stated outcome. A promise may be explicit, spoken or written, or implied by conduct. Core elements include the promisor, the promisee, the obligation, and a time frame or condition.

Promises can be ordinary, social commitments or formal obligations such as contracts. They may be conditional or unconditional, and can be personal or professional. In many legal systems, some promises become enforceable contracts when there is offer, acceptance, consideration, and an intention to create legal relations. Ethically, promises are tied to reliability and social cooperation.

Breach of a promise can erode trust and may lead to remedies such as apology, renegotiation, or compensation, depending on the context and any governing agreements. Practices to improve promise-keeping include clarifying terms, recording commitments in writing, and establishing accountability.

In computing, a Promise is a construct used to model future asynchronous operations. A Promise represents a value or failure reason and travels through states such as pending, fulfilled, or rejected, with methods to handle outcomes and to compose asynchronous steps.

Prominence of promises extends to culture and literature, where they appear as motifs of fidelity, oath-taking, and the tension between intention and action.