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Glossary

Short, precise definitions used across the ecosystem. The goal is to prevent semantic drift.

Each entry includes:

  • Meaning: one line
  • Not: what it is not
  • Defined in: the contract page that is authoritative for the term

This page is not a tutorial. If you need rationale or examples, follow the contract link.

Event​

Meaning: An atomic record of something that happened at a point in time, represented as a single JSON object in an append-only stream. Not: A session, a summary, or a document chunk. Defined in: Bus contracts: Event.

Session​

Meaning: A time window grouping of related events, with explicit boundaries and pointers back to source event IDs. Not: A conversation, a topic, or a cluster label by itself. Defined in: Bus contracts: Session.

Unit​

Meaning: A normalized, schema-validated payload produced by a pipeline stage as a stable intermediate representation for downstream work. Not: A raw input, an ad hoc dict, or a UI-only object. Defined in: Canonical unit model.

Chunk​

Meaning: A document-centric unit representing a span of a source document (pages, sections, offsets) with stable provenance metadata. Not: A chat message event or a digest memo. Defined in: Bus contracts: Chunk.

Summary​

Meaning: a controlled, policy-defined representation of source content whose purpose is to preserve meaning while reducing entropy; must carry provenance pointers back to canonical sources. Not: A digest, a bag, or a free-form note without provenance. Defined in: Bus contracts: Summary.

Document summary​

Meaning: A Summary Bus artifact whose canonical source is one document or a deterministic document slice derived from Chunk Bus aligned inputs. Not: A raw chunk, a digest, or an ad hoc note over a document. Defined in: Summary Bus contract.

Chunk-set summary​

Meaning: A Summary Bus artifact whose canonical source is a deterministic set of chunk IDs, optionally spanning one or more documents. Not: A retrieval result list, or an undocumented chunk bundle. Defined in: Summary Bus contract.

Hierarchical synthesis​

Meaning: A structured summary representation whose nodes preserve document meaning at multiple levels while remaining traceable to canonical source selections. Not: A UI tree with no provenance, or a replacement for outputs.summary_text. Defined in: Summary Bus contract and Meaning Lives in Summaries.

Summary text​

Meaning: The required textual projection of a summary artifact, stored as outputs.summary_text for compatibility-safe downstream consumption. Not: The full structured synthesis object, or raw source text. Defined in: Summary Bus contract.

Structured synthesis​

Meaning: Optional structured summary payloads such as outputs.hierarchy, intended for downstream reuse when a richer representation than plain summary text is needed. Not: A reason to remove outputs.summary_text, or a license for consumers to ignore provenance. Defined in: Summary Bus contract.

Summary tree​

Meaning: A tree-shaped form of hierarchical synthesis for a document or chunk-set summary. Not: A folder layout, or a navigation widget by itself. Defined in: Summary Bus contract.

Digest​

Meaning: A packaged multi-summary artifact intended for consumption (human or publisher), typically assembled via selection + ordering + framing rules. Not: The summary bus itself, or raw model output. Defined in: Bus contracts: Digest.

Bag​

Meaning: A curated collection of related summaries or units assembled by explicit selection rules and emitted as a digest subtype. Not: A database table, a generic folder of markdown, or an untracked aggregation. Defined in: Digest contract: Bag types and selection rules.

Artifact​

Meaning: Any materialized output of a pipeline run that is intended to be consumed downstream, including indexes, manifests, snapshots, and published markdown. Not: Temporary scratch files or intermediate debug outputs without run records. Defined in: Artifact contract: Outputs and naming.

Manifest​

Meaning: A small integrity and bookkeeping record that describes a produced batch or snapshot, including counts, hashes, schema versions, and pointers to payload files. Not: A run record, an index, or a config file. Defined in: Manifest contract.

Run record​

Meaning: The canonical audit log of a pipeline run, capturing inputs, outputs, status, errors, versions, and validation results. Not: Application logs, notebooks, or ad hoc print statements. Defined in: Run record contract and error taxonomy.

Seam​

Meaning: A defined integration boundary where downstream consumers are allowed to read upstream outputs only via specified endpoints and manifests. Not: Importing upstream internal modules, or reading upstream raw inputs directly. Defined in: Seams and integration rules.

Bus​

Meaning: A shared, contract-defined stream or directory of artifacts that multiple modules read and write through stable conventions. Not: A message queue requirement, or a shared database schema you mutate freely. Defined in: Bus overview and seam rules.

Publisher​

Meaning: A component that materializes consumable outputs from an ordered stream of units or digests, typically as snapshots, tiles, and indexes with atomic promotion. Not: A producer of raw events or a summarizer. Defined in: Publishing contract: Snapshots and tiles.

Source adapter​

Meaning: A boundary module that converts an external source format into canonical units on a bus, enforcing schema validation and idempotency. Not: A consumer that enriches or republishes existing bus artifacts. Defined in: Source adapters: Inputs, outputs, and validation.

Source type: document​

Meaning: A summary source classification indicating that the summary input is one document or a deterministic document slice. Not: A generic label for any textual source. Defined in: Summary Bus contract.

Source type: chunk_set​

Meaning: A summary source classification indicating that the summary input is a deterministic set of chunk IDs. Not: A substitute for recording the actual chunk IDs in source_ids. Defined in: Summary Bus contract.

  • corpus: a governed slice of knowledge with explicit in-scope/out-of-scope boundaries; the unit of “finite dominance”.

  • meaning surface: the portfolio layer where knowledge becomes operationally usable (routable, joinable, auditable). In this system, that layer is summaries.

  • snapshot: a published, immutable surface artifact (site page, post, dataset release, docs build) traceable to upstream digests/summaries/manifests.