Expense approval
Research example for deciding whether an employee expense may be automatically approved.
Synthetic example: This document is for
schema and authoring tests. It is not a policy, authorization, or instruction to perform an
external action.
- Pack ID
https://example.com/judgment-packs/expense-approval- Pack version
0.1.0- Outcomes
- 3
- Rules
- 3
Guide to this example
Focus: Cross-feature authoring and local-reference tracing.
The checked-in document is expected to pass JPS carrier, structural, and semantic document checks. The edge and failure notes below are inspection prompts or scratch-copy exercises; they are not evaluation-corpus rows and assert no evaluator-conformance result.
What this example demonstrates
A fuller JPS document with applicability, two evidence requirements, a cited source, three outcomes and rules, an exception, a fallback, and explicit escalation metadata.
Good for
- Tracing outcome, evidence, and source IDs from declarations to every local reference.
- Inspecting nested all/not conditions and the boundary between schema checks and semantic checks.
- Reviewing how one synthetic pack records applicability, exceptions, fallback, and human-handoff configuration.
Edges to inspect
- The declared amount split includes 5000 in the less-than-or-equal branch and values above 5000 in the review branch. Ordered decimal comparison is defined for the evaluator conformance class only, and this page is not a corpus row, so nothing here asserts a portable result.
- Under the §§7–8 resolution model, an active-investigation forced outcome bypasses normal rules. Separately, a prohibited category plus an amount above 5000 can produce conflicting normal-rule candidates, which resolve to an unresolved disposition carrying the conflict reason. Both behaviors are specified for an implementation claiming evaluator conformance; this page is not a corpus row, so nothing here is the corpus expectation for either.
- If activeInvestigation is absent, its exception is unknown and declares escalation under the §§7–8 resolution model. Missing required evidence also requests handoff, while a non-employee-expense value is not applicable.
- If resolution otherwise completes with no matching rule, the declared manual-review fallback applies. The listed no-match escalation trigger is unreachable under the §8 algorithm while that fallback exists.
Failure paths
- In a scratch copy, remove an outcome or evidence declaration while leaving a reference to it; the document can retain a valid JSON shape but must fail semantic document conformance.
- Add an unknown root member to produce a structural failure, or duplicate a JSON member to produce a carrier failure before schema validation.
- Never treat an illustrative approve, reject, or review label as authorization to process a real expense.
Keep the layers separate. A malformed carrier, a
schema-shape failure, and a dangling local reference fail at different document-conformance layers.
Missing evidence, unknown facts, conflicts, and no-match handling belong to the resolution model of
§§7–8, which JPS 0.2.0-draft makes normative for the evaluator conformance class only.
A document-conformance result never depends on them, and the notes on this page are not corpus rows.
Annotated document
The complete validated pack. Each highlighted key links to its definition on the right — click a key to see what it means and its allowed values.
{
"specVersion": "0.2.0-draft",
"id": "https://example.com/judgment-packs/expense-approval",
"version": "0.1.0",
"title": "Expense approval",
"description": "Research example for deciding whether an employee expense may be automatically approved.",
"decision": {
"intent": "Determine whether an employee expense may be automatically approved, rejected, or sent to a human reviewer.",
"question": "What approval path should this expense follow?"
},
"applicability": {
"op": "fact",
"path": "/expense/type",
"operator": "equals",
"value": "employee-expense"
},
"evidenceRequirements": [
{
"id": "receipt",
"description": "An itemized receipt for the expense.",
"required": true,
"kind": "document"
},
{
"id": "cost-center",
"description": "A valid cost-center identifier.",
"required": true,
"kind": "fact"
}
],
"sources": [
{
"id": "expense-policy",
"title": "Example expense policy",
"publisher": "Example Corporation",
"publishedAt": "2026-01-15",
"locator": {
"kind": "uri",
"value": "https://example.com/policies/expenses"
},
"citation": {
"location": "Section 4 \u2014 approval thresholds",
"excerpt": "Expenses above 5000 require finance review. Prohibited categories must be rejected."
},
"rights": "Example content; not an operational policy."
}
],
"outcomes": [
{
"id": "approve",
"label": "Approve",
"description": "The evidence and declared rules support automatic approval."
},
{
"id": "manual-review",
"label": "Manual review",
"description": "An accountable finance reviewer must decide."
},
{
"id": "reject",
"label": "Reject",
"description": "The expense falls in a prohibited category."
}
],
"rules": [
{
"id": "prohibited-category",
"description": "Reject expenses in a prohibited category.",
"when": {
"op": "fact",
"path": "/expense/category",
"operator": "in",
"value": [
"personal",
"cash-equivalent"
]
},
"outcome": "reject",
"onUnknown": "escalate",
"evidenceRequirementRefs": [
"receipt",
"cost-center"
],
"sourceRefs": [
"expense-policy"
],
"rationale": "The example policy prohibits these categories."
},
{
"id": "large-expense",
"description": "Send expenses above the declared threshold to finance review.",
"when": {
"op": "fact",
"path": "/expense/amount",
"operator": "greater-than",
"value": "5000"
},
"outcome": "manual-review",
"onUnknown": "escalate",
"evidenceRequirementRefs": [
"receipt",
"cost-center"
],
"sourceRefs": [
"expense-policy"
],
"rationale": "The example policy requires finance review above 5000."
},
{
"id": "ordinary-expense",
"description": "Approve a supported ordinary expense at or below the threshold.",
"when": {
"op": "all",
"conditions": [
{
"op": "fact",
"path": "/expense/amount",
"operator": "less-than-or-equal",
"value": "5000"
},
{
"op": "not",
"condition": {
"op": "fact",
"path": "/expense/category",
"operator": "in",
"value": [
"personal",
"cash-equivalent"
]
}
},
{
"op": "evidence-present",
"evidenceRequirement": "receipt"
},
{
"op": "evidence-present",
"evidenceRequirement": "cost-center"
}
]
},
"outcome": "approve",
"onUnknown": "escalate",
"evidenceRequirementRefs": [
"receipt",
"cost-center"
],
"sourceRefs": [
"expense-policy"
],
"rationale": "Ordinary supported expenses may follow the automatic path."
}
],
"exceptions": [
{
"id": "active-investigation",
"description": "An expense connected to an active investigation requires human review.",
"when": {
"op": "fact",
"path": "/expense/activeInvestigation",
"operator": "equals",
"value": true
},
"effect": "force-outcome",
"outcome": "manual-review",
"onUnknown": "escalate"
}
],
"fallbackOutcome": "manual-review",
"escalation": {
"triggers": [
"not-applicable",
"missing-required-evidence",
"unknown",
"conflict",
"no-match"
],
"target": {
"kind": "human-role",
"name": "Finance reviewer"
},
"message": "Review the expense, cited policy, missing evidence, and conflicting rules."
},
"metadata": {
"authors": [
"Judgment Pack Specification contributors"
],
"createdAt": "2026-07-22T00:00:00Z",
"license": "Apache-2.0"
}
}