The Court Room · for Mike and Adam
Everything below is already decided. This is the walkthrough of what goes on the paper, why it is built that way, and the four things still standing between us and a print run.
Each person gets a mailed Summons on heavy stock with their own number printed on it. That number plus the email we sent the notice to is how they claim their seat online. Once they are in, they set a password and the number stops being a login.
What you need for the printer is a spreadsheet with four columns, and one of those columns does not exist yet. That is the whole holdup, and it is a decision rather than a build.
A three digit jury number, zero padded. Not a word code like the Grand Jury has today.
This is the whole code. It is short on purpose: it gets read aloud at the door, typed on a phone, and printed on a card. WITNESS-964 is fine to text somebody, and miserable to read off a letter in a dark lounge.
The number is also the member's identity inside the club from that point on. It goes on the membership card, it is how a bar tab gets matched to the right person, and it is the thing a host sees at check in. It is not a temporary activation code that gets thrown away.
The Grand Jury logs in today with a word and a number: WITNESS-964, BAILIFF-707. Those were the right call for what they were built for, and the wrong one for what comes next.
The problem is not the format, it is that the code is the whole login. One string, printed on paper, and whoever reads it is inside. Nothing else is asked for.
| Word code today | Number and email | |
|---|---|---|
| Somebody photographs the letter | They are in | They still need the email it was issued to |
| The code leaks | Reprint the letter or the card. There is no reset | Reset the password by email, like anything else |
| What it opens | A nomination form | Lockers, guest history, running notes, a card on file |
That last row is the real argument. The same style of credential that was fine for a nomination form is now the front door to a member's locker contents and their card on file. The room behind the door got much bigger, so the door had to change.
There is a practical side too. Generating well over a hundred unique memorable word codes invites collisions and misreads, and these get read aloud at a door and typed on a phone. WITNESS against WITNESSES, a zero against an O. A three digit number has none of that.
And a number can do a second job a code never could. Because it is not the secret, it is safe to print on the membership card and say out loud, which is what lets it be the thing a host recognises at check in and the thing a bar tab gets matched to.
Existing Grand Jury codes keep working. They are not being switched off to make this happen, so no seated juror loses access partway through.
Because a piece of paper can be photographed, and because the numbers run in sequence. If 007 alone opened an account, then 008 and 009 do too, and anyone who sees one Summons can guess the rest.
So claiming a seat needs the number and the email address we mailed the notice to, and both have to match the same person. After that the member sets their own password, and from then on the login is email and password like anything else. The number retires from being a credential and stays as their number.
When someone gets it wrong, the site says the same thing whether the number does not exist, the email does not match, or the seat was already claimed. That is deliberate. A more helpful error message would tell a stranger which numbers are real.
They are assigned by hand from a list, never generated. The bands are set:
| Range | Who | Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| 001–199 | Founding members | 199 |
| 200–299 | Jury Members | 100 |
| 300–399 | National members | 100 |
| 400–499 | Councilors | 100 |
| 500–599 | Honorary members | 100 |
| 600–699 | Test accounts, never a real person | — |
Founding started at 100 and was widened to 199 on August 14. There are already three dozen seated jurors and the docket carries well over a hundred jury tier nominees, so at any sensible approval rate 100 numbers would not have covered it.
Jury Members sit second, directly after Founding. That is new as of August 17. Founding absorbs everyone the docket approves, so the post opening Jury tier had no numbers of its own. Giving it 200 to 299 pushes National and Councilor each down one band, and Councilor lands on the 400s, which is exactly what that block was being held back for. Honorary and test accounts do not move.
Every number from 001 to 699 now belongs to a tier, so there is no spare block left in the middle. A tier invented later starts at 700 rather than slotting in between. That is a fine trade for having Jury Members numbered at all, and worth knowing before anyone proposes a fifth membership type.
Numbers freeze the moment they are printed. There is no renumbering afterward, because the number is on the card, in the tab history, and in the member's head. So the list that goes to the printer is the list forever. That is the reason we are being fussy about the bands before anything gets set in ink.
On August 31 the bench stops reviewing. Nominations close the same night, so the list stops moving.
Working from the bench's sidebar notes. Nothing is approved yet, so today every name on the docket is still pending. This step is what turns a nomination into a member.
One pass, by hand, into the bands above. The tool refuses the whole run rather than guessing if it hits an ambiguous name, a duplicate, a reserved number, or somebody who already holds a different one.
Four columns, one row per person. Deduped, so nobody nominated twice gets two letters.
The paper is the real experience. The email is a heads up to the same address that is half their login, and it carries a confirm you saw this button so nobody can say the letter never arrived.
Worded as a request, not a threat. Anyone who has not responded gets the electronic version as a fallback, which is also the answer for travellers and bad addresses.
National and Councilor summonses go out after opening and carry an initiation fee, per your call on July 29. Founding goes first and on its own.
| Column | Where it comes from | Ready? |
|---|---|---|
| Name | The nomination | Every nomination has one |
| The nomination | Every nomination has one, the form requires it | |
| Mailing address | The nomination | All but three are mailable |
| Jury number | Assigned at step 03 | None assigned yet |
Deliberately no total here. The docket is a live list that grows daily while nominations are open, so any number printed in this document is wrong by the time you read it.
Expect the count to jump, and it is not a data problem. Mike is entering the seated Grand Jury by hand so they receive an official Summons like everyone else, which adds roughly three dozen names in one pass. Some of them were already put forward by another juror, so there will be duplicates on purpose. They get merged before anything prints: the mailing list is one row per person, matched on shared email or phone, which is shorter than the raw nomination count.
None of these are build work. One is a decision, one is timing, one is data collection.
They sit at 200 to 299, second after Founding, with National and Councilor each moved down one. This was the open question and it is closed, so nothing is waiting on it. Flag it now if you want the order different, because it is free to change today and frozen once the first Summons prints.
Every name on the docket is still pending, which is correct for today. But numbers cannot be assigned to a list that does not exist yet, so the print run starts the day after you and Adam finish the final calls.
The original rollout ran by text off a spreadsheet, so most of the seated jurors have a phone number and nothing else. Email is half the login, so a juror without one cannot claim their account at all. They are being onboarded in person anyway, which is the moment to collect it, but it needs to happen before their Summons is worth mailing.
Mike's entry pass above helps here rather than adding to the problem: the nomination form will not accept a name without an email, so every juror he enters arrives with one.
Everyone else is mailable. Chasing the whole bench for address confirmation is not needed, which was the worry on July 29 and turned out not to be a real problem.
Everything else is already built and waiting. The claim page, the number and email check, the password step and the six step onboarding wizard behind it are all live.