Major Description
Slice state is currently interacted with as a string. It is IMO not trivial to understand which values it can be compared to, in part because the Replica and Slice states are located in different classes, some repeating same constant names and values.
Also, it's not very clear when does a Slice get into which state and what does that mean.
I think if it's an enum, and documented briefly in the code, it would help interacting with it through code. I don't mind if we include more extensive documentation in the reference guide / wiki and refer people there for more details.