Now-state
Now-state is the user's situation at the present moment: the actual conditions surrounding them right now, what they have on hand, what they know, where they're positioned. It's moment-bound, shifting as the user moves and acts; their now-state a minute from now isn't the same as their now-state at this instant. It refers to the user's current position as such, not to where they came from or where they're trying to end up.
Definition
The user's state at the present moment of their timeline — where they are right now, with all the conditions that currently hold.
What now-state names
Now-state names the user's current position in state-space without anchoring to any particular transition. The conditions in play at this moment: what the user has, what they know, where they're positioned, what's around them. When the framework needs to ask "what's true of the user, right now," now-state is the primitive that answers.
Moves with the user
Now-state shifts as the user advances along their timeline. The user's now-state at one moment is different from their now-state a moment later — each step they take produces a new now-state, with new conditions in play. It's bound to the present; there's no "earlier now-state" or "later now-state," only the user's state at the current moment.
Relation to starting state
Starting state is transition-relative — it's the state at the beginning of a particular named transition. Now-state carries no transition frame; it names where the user is. A user three steps into a five-step transition has the same starting state they had when the transition began, but their now-state has advanced. The two primitives answer different questions. Starting state: "where did the user enter this transition from?" Now-state: "where is the user right now?"
What operates on it
Reachability operates on now-state: whether the user can advance through pursuit depends on what they have, know, and are positioned with in the state they're currently in. Reachable affordances — the slice of the affordance landscape currently integratable — are filtered against now-state. The user's hopscotch (selecting an affordance, integrating it, landing in a new now-state, repeating) is structured around now-state at each step.
Example
A user has signed up for an invoicing tool and is partway through setting up their first invoice. Their starting state for "first invoice sent" is the state they were in when that pursuit began: account just created, no business configured, no clients added. Their now-state is different: business name entered, logo uploaded, currently looking at the "add a client" step. The starting state stays anchored to the transition's beginning; the now-state moves with the user's progress. Whether the user can complete "add a client" depends on conditions in their now-state — do they have their client's email at hand right now? — not on what was true at the transition's beginning.