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statuswhat

Statuswhat is a neologism used in information design to describe a portable, structured representation of the current state of an object, process, or resource. It functions as a generic metadata descriptor intended to be applicable across domains. The term combines 'status' with a generic 'what' to emphasize that the notion of status should be attached to a specific target rather than being an abstract label.

A statuswhat record typically includes fields such as target_id or object_id, item_type, status, timestamp, agent, and

Applications include project management to tag tasks, data governance to track lifecycle states, APIs to report

Statuswhat is not a formal standard and has no single governing specification. It is mainly used in

optional
notes
or
rationale.
In
practice
it
may
be
implemented
as
a
JSON
object,
a
relational
table
row,
or
an
API
payload.
The
exact
schema
is
deliberately
flexible
to
accommodate
different
domains,
but
common
patterns
include
a
state
value
(for
example
open,
in_progress,
done),
a
time
when
the
state
was
set,
and
the
actor
responsible.
the
current
condition
of
resources,
and
auditing
for
traceability.
A
concrete
example
might
describe
a
ticket
with
status
open,
timestamp,
and
notes
indicating
blockers;
in
a
data
pipeline,
a
statuswhat
could
mark
a
data
batch
as
'validated'
with
a
validation_id
and
reviewer.
documentation
and
design
discussions
as
a
flexible
shorthand
for
attaching
state
to
a
target.
Its
usefulness
depends
on
clear
definitions
of
the
status
values
and
consistent
schema
choices.
Critics
warn
that
without
standard
semantics,
interoperability
suffers.