THE RECORD · WHAT HAPPENED
- stream
- The append-only, totally ordered log of events that is the system's source of truth. State is a deterministic fold over the log; everything else is derived.
- event
- One transition in the record: what happened, in sequence, with its author and its time attached.
- receipt
- The record of what the runtime actually did: what resolved, what ran, under which grant. Receipts are written once, at execution time, and never recomputed.
COMPUTATION · HOW IT RUNS
- operation
- A named, versioned unit of executable work with declared inputs, outputs, and required authority.
- propagator
- The step function of a thread, what another runtime would call the executor or the agent loop: it assembles context, invokes the policy, and commits the results to the log as events.
- policy
- The rule that resolves the choice of next step. A workflow's policy is fixed; an agent's policy consults a model. Nondeterminism is confined here, and its output enters the record as events.
- projection
- A read-only function of the log. Projections select and arrange what the record holds; they never append to it.
- view
- A projection maintained as the log grows, queryable at any time. Views are retroactive: one defined next month runs over the entire history.
- assembly
- The construction of a model's context from the record: deterministic, budgeted, and receipted, so the same log assembles the same context.
- surface
- An interface onto the kernel: CLI, daemon, RPC, MCP, filesystem. Every surface is a refinement of the same stream; a faithful surface never presents state the record does not hold.
AUTHORITY · WHAT IT MAY DO
- capability
- An unforgeable reference to something an agent could be allowed to do: a tool, a secret, a filesystem mount, a network origin. Declared before it can be granted; there is no ambient authority.
- grant
- A lease of a capability under least authority: a grantor, a scope, a budget, an expiry. Authority is leased, never owned.
- mandate
- A standing grant: authority that persists across runs until it expires or is revoked.
- petition
- A recorded request for authority that does not yet exist. Denial fails closed with an error naming exactly the missing grant, so authority widens by explicit, auditable steps.
PACKAGING · WHAT IT IS MADE OF
- manifest
- The specification of an agent: model profile, tools, resources, secrets, permissions, and context policy. The kernel executes the specification directly.
- package
- A content-addressed bundle of manifests, operations, and assets: what you install is byte for byte what was published.
- alias
- A human-readable name that resolves to an immutable content hash. Each resolution is itself recorded, with a receipt.
- pin
- A fixed resolution: this name means this hash, until deliberately moved. Upgrades become explicit transitions in the record instead of silent drift.
- binding
- The explicit attachment of a declared capability to a concrete resource before use. Unbound authority does not exist.
EXECUTION · WHERE AND WHEN IT RUNS
- agent
- A state machine whose next transition is chosen by a model: a manifest, a thread, and a policy. Declared before it runs; governed while it runs.
- thread
- One durable line of execution: its events, its state, its grants. Because its state is a fold over the log, a thread survives crashes by replay and resumes from the record, not from memory.
- turn
- One step of the machine: context assembled, a transition taken, results committed. The unit at which work is budgeted and audited.
- workspace
- The files and resources a thread works against, mounted under its grants.
- placement
- Where a thread executes: in a sandbox or on the host, local in V1, with cloud placement designed and not claimed until it exists.
THE VOCABULARY · HOW THE LAWS SPEAK
Not abstractions but terms of art: the qualifiers and attributes the laws are written in.
- chaotic
- Output a model produced: irreproducible, and carrying no authority of its own. Chaotic output discharges as events, never as views.
- discharged
- Committed to the log as an event. After discharge an output is immutable history: revision means appending, never editing.
- witnessed
- Recorded as observed, never trusted. Ordering is logical, by position in the log; wall-clock time rides along as data, in the tradition of logical clocks.
- provenance
- The attribution carried on every event: user, agent, tool, or model. Every run is attributable end to end.
- faithful
- Presenting exactly what the record holds, nothing invented, nothing hidden. The first law: every surface is faithful, or it is illegal.