Build glossary

The words a contributor meets that a user never does. The user's words are in the user glossary; a word in neither is not allowed in a page, a flag or a message.

core — packages/world-core, @volter/world-core: the state kernel and shared runtime libraries. One entry model, checkpoints, parent-position branches and head execution; vendor semantics stay in the packages. See architecture.

kernel — packages/world-*: the runtime (world-runtime), the remote (twins-host), the dev-only tooling, the shared UI assets. Vendor-agnostic; few writers; kernel process.

pack — a twin's package as the build sees it: <vendor>/ in twin-packs-p3, created from the vendor's spec by Creating a pack. A user says twin, or package.

unit — a directory holding src/manifest.ts: a pack, or one lane of a pack of lanes. The pack tools take one.

lane — one API of a vendor with several (its own spec, manifest and handlers), <vendor>/<lane>/, keeping the vendor's one store.

catalog — every pack: the @volter/twin-* packages a World resolves from its sources (a pack repository's checkout, or the installed packages in an app).

demand — what the products volter.ai names call: the scan's ranking of vendors (generated/DEMAND.md), and a pack's own reading of its applications' calls (journeys/demand.json).

life — a pack's customer life (journeys/customer-life.json): one believable customer's story, walked through the pack's fetch, the pack's proof. Its outline is the story's acts, before any handler.

decision table — per operation served, what it does, decided before any handler is written; its outcome is journeys/decisions.json.

blitz — writing every handler of a pack in one pass from its decision table.

report — a pack's walked life, coverage, examples and breadth (scripts/score-pack.ts).

door — an HTTP endpoint a twin or a remote serves beside the vendor's API. A user reads "HTTP API".

backing — which of local and remote stands behind a vendor on a remote. A user reads local and remote as nouns.

shape — a vendor's wire, as the code names it. A user reads "the vendor's API".

placeholder — the default data's origin, as the code names it (PLACEHOLDER_REMOTE, placeholder-pull). A user reads "default data".

observed — vendor state admitted through observeResource into a root’s log; default seeding supplies inherited state through the seed window.

landing — an entry added to the parent with a receipt; its branch copy is not applied twice.

admission — the reservation of memory and disk up makes before starting; refused by name.

instance — the running world's record: instance.json and the directory around it.

manifest (world) — the document a world publishes for attachments: vendors, CA, proxy, env. manifest (capability) — a pack's enumeration of the vendor's surface with a verify() per capability; the completeness number's denominator. manifest (pack) — a derived pack's src/manifest.ts: the vendor facts no spec carries, and the surfaces outside the spec.

derived pack — a pack with src/manifest.ts and src/generated/: its wire, schemas, generic CRUD, perform, refresh and coverage are generated from the vendor's spec; only its semantics are hand-written.

semantics — a derived pack's hand-written behaviour: state machines as data and handlers by operationId. Write semantics run wherever the head does not perform a write now; read semantics run under every head.

cell — a value of a state field paired with an operation on its resource; the unit a derived pack's completion is counted in.

attestation — a signed judgment (a journey's plausibility, a transition's source, a ruling on a cell, a review), keyed by the hash of what it depends on and stale when that changes.

attachment — applying a world's vendor map to one consumer. A user reads run, activate, shell.

narration — a changeset's generated summary, as the code names it. A user reads "summary".

basis — a change’s recorded assumptions, as compatibility code names them. A user reads "base" for the branch’s parent position.

sealed — the sandbox mode for cooperating HTTP/Fetch and guarded Node connections (transport coverage); native traffic requires an enforced Machine boundary. Also a credential at rest on the remote.

recipe (cookbook) — a runnable example, as the cookbook's tooling names it. A user reads "example". procedure (building a twin) — Creating a pack.

skin — the composed front a remote presents: one URL, every twin a path.

R-numbers (R2a, R14, …) — identifiers retained in the invariant runners and older design records. Current implementation rules live in architecture, and unresolved work is on Volter's board.

history descriptor — an immutable view's verified segment ranges, storage generations and projection layout. The descriptor's content hash identifies it; its dependencies participate in World cleanup. Local views share payloads; a remote cache deduplicates complete entry contents.