Glossary
Each thing in the guide has one name, and every chapter uses that exact name. The last column links to the chapter that introduces the term and explains it.
| Term | Meaning | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| session | One run of a human or an agent against the workspace, from opening it to closing it. | 1 |
| the record | Everything a session knew that the code does not hold. Lives in context/. | 1 |
| workspace | The outer git repository that holds the record, with members inside it. | 1 |
| member | A code repository checked out inside the workspace at the path the manifest gives it. | 1 |
| state file | STATE.md. What is live, next, blocked, and where each ledger is. | 1 |
| decision register | DECISIONS.md. Numbered decisions with reasons; entries are added, never changed. | 1 |
| findings file | FINDINGS.md. Verified facts about the environment. | 1 |
| engagement | One piece of work with a start and an end. Has a directory under engagements/. | 1 |
| plan | What an engagement intends to do, in units of work with acceptance criteria. | 1 |
| ledger | The log of what an engagement ran and what it showed. | 1 |
| contract | The written definition of the layout of the record. | 1 |
| conformance suite | The set of example workspaces a conforming tool must accept or reject. | 1 |
| template | The repository aw init clones to create a workspace. | 1 |
| the layer | The files the workspace tracks: manifest, instructions, scripts, the record. | 2 |
| manifest | workspace.toml. Names the workspace and lists the members. | 2 |
| skill | A directory of instructions an agent loads for a given task. A member offers skills only when the manifest opts it in. | 2 |
| thread of work | One live line of work. The state file holds one item for each. | 2 |
| registry | artefacts.toml and artefacts.md. The kinds of file the record may hold and how each lives and ends. | 2 |
| lint | aw lint. Checks the record against the contract before each commit. | 2 |
| durable | Committed to the workspace, and pushed if it has a remote. | 2 |
| frontmatter | The short header at the start of a file in the record, naming its kind and status. | 4 |
| kind | What a file in the record is: a plan, a ledger, a handover. Declared in the frontmatter. | 4 |
| status | Where a file is in its life. Declared in the frontmatter; legal values come from the class. | 4 |
| class | A file's lifetime: standing, binding, episodic or ephemeral. Derived from the kind, never written. | 4 |
| handover | The instructions that launch a worker on one unit of work. Ephemeral. | 4 |
| report | The result a worker returns: what was done, what needs a decision, what is blocked. Ephemeral. | 4 |
| graduation | The moment an ephemeral file's residue is recorded in a durable file and the file is deleted, in one commit. | 4 |
| remits | The standing areas of responsibility an engagement's work counts against. | 4 |
| unit of work | One dispatchable piece of an engagement, with its own acceptance criteria. | 4 |
| disposition | What happens to a file in the record at the end of its life. | 5 |
| revision | The contract's integer version. Moves when a clause changes, never for an editorial change or a tool release. | 5 |
| fixture | One example workspace in the conformance suite, with the verdict a conforming tool must give. | 5 |
| delivery model | A member's own declaration of how work lands in it: commit, branch, draft pull request, ready, merge. | 6 |
| gate | An action that needs your sign-off, whatever a delivery model says. | 6 |
| orchestrator | The one session that writes the record in a multi-agent engagement: plans, dispatches, keeps the ledger. | 6 |
| worker | A session that takes one unit of work, writes its member and its own report, and nothing else. | 6 |
| orchestration kernel | The skill that runs orchestrator and workers across a multi-unit engagement. | 7 |
| agent definition | A Claude Code file that names an agent and sets its tools and hooks. | 7 |
| profile | A file that lists what a sandboxed agent may read, write and reach. | 7 |
| pattern | One markdown file in a lore corpus, holding a convention or practice for an agent to apply. | 7 |