I was able to create, fund, and settle a contract without having to use bitcoin core or anything technical, just our client library.
for the perspective of using the client:
  1. draft a proposal then submit it to create a contract.
  2. the contract (and client) let's you generate an address, which you can send funds to.
  3. use the client to check the address for payment and it will register / fund the contract, now the contract will activate once the funds clear
  4. once the contract is active, you can use the client to submit arguments to the VM, such as "close" on "tails" path. If you have rights to settle, the agent will close and broadcast the "tails" transaction