Where a document stands, and who is holding it

A document can carry a state — draft, in review, approved, or superseded — so a reader can tell at a glance whether to rely on it. Ask your assistant to set one (set_document_state), or use the State field in the document panel. The four words are fixed, the same in every workspace: a state is a claim other people rely on, not an internal process each team should get to rename. And it is a LABEL — it gates nothing. A document marked "draft" is visible to exactly the same people who could already see it; the state just tells them what they are looking at. Every surface that shows it says so. Checking a document out is different: it really does refuse. Ask your assistant to check one out (check_out_document) before you start rewriting it, and nobody else can publish a new version — update_file, publish_file, rollback_file — while you hold it; they are told who does. Reading, renaming, moving and commenting are all unaffected. Release it (check_out_document again, or the Release button on the document panel) as soon as you are done — a forgotten check-out is worse than none, which is why the panel always says how long one has been held. A check-out belongs to a person, so it only works when your assistant is signed in as an account (an OAuth connection) — a workspace access key has nobody to be, and is told so plainly rather than silently taking a lock nobody can release. An admin can always force one open if its holder is gone.