Glossary
The dozen words that carry the whole platform. Each entry says what the thing is in one breath and links to the page that owns the full story.
The data model
| Term |
Meaning |
| Mesh node |
The universal unit of content: a path, a name, a NodeType, and a typed Content payload. Documents, threads, agents, dimensions, notifications — everything is a mesh node. |
| Path / namespace |
A node's address, e.g. acme/Stories/launch-plan. The namespace is everything before the last segment; the first segment names the partition. See Unified Path. |
| Partition |
A unit of physical storage isolation rooted at a top-level path segment (acme/…, rbuergi/…, Doc/…). On Postgres, one schema per partition. Created only by partition-owning node types (User, Space). See Partition Storage Routing. |
| NodeType |
The type of a node — what its Content looks like, how it renders, how it persists. Node types are themselves data: authored, versioned, and compiled at runtime. See Node Types. |
| Satellite |
A node living under a main node in a _Segment namespace (_Thread, _Comment, _Access, _Notification, …) with MainNode pointing back. Inherits the main node's access; routes to its own storage table. See Satellite Entity Patterns. |
| Main node |
The content node a satellite belongs to — the access-control anchor: who can read the main node can read its satellites. |
| Dimension |
A reference-data node type whose instances populate pickers and group facts in cubes and reports — countries, lines of business, … See Data Modeling. |
The runtime
| Term |
Meaning |
| Hub (message hub) |
The actor: a single-threaded message processor with an address. Every node has an owning hub; hubs talk only via typed messages. See Actor Model. |
| Owning hub |
The one hub authoritative for a node's state. All writes — local or from other silos — are serialised through its action block. |
| Hosted hub |
A child hub created inside another (_Exec for streaming work, kernels, …). Shares the parent's lifetime. |
| Workspace |
A hub's typed data context: entity collections, streams, and the node-stream API (workspace.GetMeshNodeStream(path)). See Workspace References. |
| Stream / handle |
The live IObservable<MeshNode> for one path, with .Update(...) write-back — one shared handle per path per silo via the stream cache. See MeshNode Stream Cache. |
| Silo |
One process of the distributed mesh (Orleans host or the monolith). Each silo runs one stream cache; grains/hubs inside it share handles. |
| Mesh |
The whole graph of nodes + the runtime that routes messages among their hubs, across silos. |
| Query |
The eventually-consistent read-side index for sets (nodeType:…, namespace:…, free text → vector search). Never for a single known node's content. See CQRS. |
| Layout area |
A named, addressable view a hub renders as a control tree; the Blazor client binds to it by route @{address}/{area}. See Layout Areas. |
| Kernel |
The C# scripting host behind executable Code nodes and interactive markdown. See Script Execution. |
The control plane
| Term |
Meaning |
stream.Update |
The one mutation API: GetMeshNodeStream(path).Update(node => changed).Subscribe(...). Cross-hub it ships an RFC 7396 merge patch. |
Status / RequestedStatus |
The state-machine pair: callers patch RequestedStatus (the ask); only the owning hub writes Status (the truth) — its watcher reacts. See Activity Control Plane. |
| Activity |
A satellite node representing a unit of long-running work — inputs, progress messages, terminal output — driven through RequestedStatus. |
| Thread |
A conversation node (_Thread satellite) whose rounds are executed by agents; submissions go through hub.StartThread / hub.SubmitMessage. See Thread Operations. |
| Agent |
An AI participant defined as a mesh node under Agent/…, acting through the same APIs as users. See Agentic AI Architecture. |
| AccessAssignment |
The permission grant: a node in a _Access namespace giving a user/group roles at that scope. See Granting Access. |
| AccessContext |
The identity riding every operation; framework write primitives carry it across Subscribe boundaries. See AccessContext Propagation. |
| Owner Injection |
The node OWNER (from CreatedBy) is the standing access context on a node/thread/activity hub — injected everywhere, carried forward via that hub's standing identity (AccessService.SetStandingIdentity), never a process-wide field. Genuine infra (doc sync) = System; an empty context is rejected, never faked. See Owner Injection. |
| IoPool |
The bounded bridge where async/blocking I/O enters the reactive world — the only place Observable.FromAsync exists. See Controlled I/O Pooling. |