Glossary

Works today — plain markdown plus your agent; no corpus tooling required.

One line per term, alphabetical. Where a precise internal term exists for advanced or tooling contexts, the definition names it; the reverse map is at the bottom.

Term	Definition
acceptance criterion (AC)	One verifiable requirement in a spec, labeled AC-NNN; the unit a review packet reports a result on.
ADR (decision record)	One recorded project decision with its rationale, numbered in decisions/.
agent run summary	The worker agent's closing report, filled in the task packet's ## Run summary section — changed files, results citing the Verify pastes, candidate findings; the review packet reads it (internally, and in the future CLI: trace).
AGENTS.md	The short, always-loaded context file an agent reads on every task; aim for ~100 lines — corpus's own convention, nothing enforces it.
audit	An observation-only report on present-state risk or debt, each observation evidence-grounded; it observes, never prescribes. Advanced artifact.
bug report	The diagnosis of one defect: reliable reproduction, expected vs actual, root-cause evidence. Advanced artifact.
change plan	The artifact (CHANGE-*) for structural work: what changes, what behavior provably survives, in what order, with rollback criteria.
checks	Common mistakes to check for, each with a stable ID (C001…); in SOL form they extend into the SOL-XNNN catalogue. See checks.
Close	The last step of the loop: merge or block, update the board, save findings.
distinct-lens review	Giving each independent reviewer a different aim — correctness · maintainability/design · security/reproduction — rather than repeating one read; default two lenses, a risk-based third (ADR-0095).
drift	Divergence between a requirement and its implementation after a Pass; when detected, it surfaces as the Stale result. See drift.
Dropped from sources	The spec section recording what the ticket asked for that the spec deliberately leaves out, and why — intended loss, made auditable.
durable record	A workspace artifact kept for the repo's life and superseded-not-deleted — a spec of record, a decision (ADR), a saved finding. Opposite of transitory output (ADR-0096).
evidence	What backs a claim: pasted command output or a CI link, never a bare "tests passed" (internally: proof).
evidence path	The files a verification actually exercised on its last Pass; what decides whether a later edit makes that Pass stale.
evolvability defect	A maintainability/readability/structure/documentation issue that does not affect visible behavior — the layer tests cannot reach and review primarily catches (~75% of what code review catches; ADR-0095).
finding	One durable lesson with provenance (FINDING-*), saved at Close so the next session doesn't re-learn it (internally, the saving act: promote).
honesty level	The tag every rule carries: convention · checklist · toolable · enforced. The legend lives in checks.
intake	The verbatim snapshot of an upstream ticket, issue, or page — preserved uninterpreted so the spec keeps its anchor.
inventory	An observation-only map of existing code (INV-*) made before brownfield work: modules, interfaces, observed behavior, tests, unknowns.
isolation mode	How a delegated task ran relative to the main checkout — its own worktree, the shared tree, or patch-only; recorded on the task's Provenance line so review can judge attribution.
multi-repo workspace	A dedicated workspace repo governing several code repos: one spec store, one board, one decision ledger; each code repo carries only the three-line footprint (pointer, optional guide, gitignore lines). Dedicated workspace repos use <project>-works by default.
non-goals	What a spec deliberately does not change; the section that bounds scope.
open question	An unresolved item in a spec; a [blocking] one keeps the spec out of status: ready and holds Close.
oversized-packet check	A size heuristic (changed-LOC + files-touched) named in ADR-0094, then measured and deferred — a raw band cannot be both useful and low-false-positive for code task diffs (ADR-0097). Specified-not-shipped; instead corpus review surfaces the diff size as neutral info for the reviewer to judge, no threshold asserted.
owner	The person or team named in spec frontmatter whose say-so changes the spec.
preservation guarantee	A change-plan row naming a behavior that must not change, with its verification — reuses the spec's requirement ids (plan-local: PG-NNN).
provenance (worker)	The optional ## Run summary line a delegated/worker-run task records — sources read, guide(s) loaded, worker identity, isolation mode; evidence to inspect at review, never a trust token (ADR-0076).
Pull	The first step of the loop: capture the upstream ask verbatim into an intake file.
requirement	One binding statement of intended behavior, with a Verify with: line (internally: obligation).
research	A survey of the options and evidence behind one question; it commits to no decision. Advanced artifact.
review by exception	Reading the coverage table and the exception list instead of the whole diff; the packet points your eyes.
review packet	The per-task file (REVIEW-*): requirement coverage with evidence, the human-attention list, a suggested decision.
review result	Pass · Fail · Unverified · Blocked, one per requirement row (internally: verdict; lifecycle values Waived, Stale, Contradicted qualify an earlier result).
review stance	The role you read with — e.g. the skeptic's refute-by-default (internally: profile). See review stances.
risk-weighted review	Concentrating review scrutiny by change-type, diffusion, and churn — not greenfield-vs-brownfield; net-new is not intrinsically safe once size is controlled (ADR-0094).
Run	The loop step where the agent implements the task packet on its own branch and pastes real verification output.
scout	A delegated read/research helper — it gathers, leaves no task packet, and does not merge. Distinct from a worker (boots from the packet, owns a write scope, leaves a run summary).
six-step loop	Pull → Spec → Task → Run → Review → Close, plus the conditional Inventory and Change Plan steps for structural/brownfield work.
SOL	The optional structured-requirements notation (format: sol): typed blocks, one strength word per requirement, explicit VERIFY BY bindings. A notation, not a programming language.
source authority	The rule for which artifact's intent governs when two conflict; code may falsify intent but never silently amend it. See source authority.
spec	Intended behavior (SPEC-*): intent, non-goals, requirements, open questions, affected areas.
split work	Turning a spec or change plan into agent-sized task packets with disjoint scopes (internally: lower / decompose).
stance	See review stance.
status board	status.md, the hand-edited workboard; a "done" claim on it links its review packet.
step	One stage of the loop — Pull, Spec, Task, Run, Review, Close, plus the conditionals (internally: pass; the finer-grained steps live in the advanced lifecycle).
structured requirements	The verifiable form of a requirement: in the user tier the plain AC-NNN + Verify with: shape, optionally tightened into the SOL notation. The user-tier name for what SOL notates.
task packet	The bounded work order an agent runs (TASK-*): source, scope, do-not-change list, verify commands, agent instructions.
transitory output	Short-lived workspace output — a review packet, corpus check output, a run log — that ages out (git history or archive/, a 30–90-day window) once its durable record captures what mattered. Opposite of durable record (ADR-0096).
verification method	The kind of evidence behind a requirement — test, static, contract, property, model, perf, security, manual, monitor (internally: proof type).
Verify with:	The line binding a requirement to a runnable check; the highest-value line in a spec.
watchlist	The advisory list of vague words a requirement line must pair with an observable criterion. The list is in checks.
wave	One stage of a change plan; each wave leaves the codebase green and names its verify step.
workboard	status.md, the hand-edited table of open specs, tasks, reviews, and findings — see status board.
worker	A delegated agent that boots from a task packet, owns a write scope, and leaves a run summary with provenance; its work merges. Distinct from a scout (read/research, no merge).
workspace	The small repo holding specs, tasks, reviews, findings, and the board (internally: spec repo). Code repos stay pristine.
worktree	A parallel git checkout of the same repo — its own folder and branch — so each task's run stays isolated and parallel tasks never share files.
writing rules	The word-level spec hygiene — one strength word, no vague qualifiers without a pin on the same line (internally: APS). The watchlist is in checks.

If you meet the internal term first

Advanced pages and tooling contracts sometimes use the precise internal vocabulary. The map back:

Internal term	Everyday term
APS	writing rules
lint code (SOL-XNNN)	check
lower / decompose	split work
obligation	requirement
pass	step
profile	review stance
promote	save a finding
proof / proof type	evidence / verification method
spec repo	workspace
trace	agent run summary
verdict	review result
Waived (annotation)	merged with a recorded waiver (who · which rows · why · expiry)
code-repo adapter	the workspace pointer + gitignore lines a code repo carries — today, nothing else

Related

• corpus Reference — the same vocabulary as lookup tables.
• Artifact formats — every file type, frontmatter, and required sections.
• Checks — the check IDs and the writing-rules watchlist.