Manage a guided onboarding journey

Core meaning

Capability purpose: Let an owner progress through staged setup without losing prior answers, provenance, or control when channels, pacing, or depth vary.
Meaningful outcome: The journey has a current stage, completed-step evidence, an explicit next action, and a terminal or resumable disposition.
Boundaries — includes: journey identity, stage and step state, selected setup depth, raw responses, parsed responses, pacing, pause/resume, override evidence, and completion state.
Boundaries — excludes: contact-channel verification, personal-AI identity, durable environment configuration, first-entry authorization, permanent account lifecycle, and a particular email or screen sequence.
Terms and concepts: A journey coordinates independently governed setup outcomes; completing a step does not imply that every adjacent capability succeeded.

Actor: An owner or an authorized onboarding orchestrator acting for the owner.
Command / intent: Start, resume, answer, defer, or complete the next eligible onboarding step.
Current state: A journey identity, current stage, prior responses, applicable setup profile, and owner/contact binding exist or can be created.
Policies / invariants: Raw owner responses are preserved; parsed structure remains traceable to them; optional detail does not block a viable setup; automated progression follows declared policy; manual overrides are attributable and cannot fabricate owner input.
Transition: Record the response or control action, evaluate the stage policy, preserve the resulting state, and identify the next step or terminal disposition.
Result: An active, paused, completed, abandoned, or failed journey record with an explicit next action when applicable.
Events / effects: May request contact verification, identity maintenance, preference configuration, environment preparation, or first-entry authorization.
Unknowns: Universal stage definitions, channel choices, pacing, and abandonment rules are not established.

Journey progress must not be represented as contact verification, identity proof, environment readiness, or authorized entry without the corresponding evidence.
Resuming a journey must preserve prior source answers and supersession history.

Prefer progress over optional completeness while clearly marking defaults and unresolved setup items.

Purpose: Explain the current stage and what the owner can do next.
Trigger: A step completes, pauses, fails, or awaits an owner response.
Audience: The onboarding owner.
Required meaning: Current stage, retained progress, next action, and whether any result is provisional.
Representative example text: Example; illustrative, not shipped copy: “Your progress is saved. Continue with the next setup step when you are ready.”
Possible realizations: email, product screen, message, or owner update.

Which onboarding stages are required for each PIOS implementation or product profile remains profile-specific.

Statement	Semantic class	Evidence status	Source / note
Onboarding progression is staged, resumable, and distinct from the capabilities that create identity, prepare configuration, and authorize entry.	rule/invariant	sourced	D04 and D07.