Glossary

The shared vocabulary used throughout the Graphorin documentation, in alphabetical order.

A

Agent. A typed unit of behaviour that runs the model -> tool calls -> model loop. Created with createAgent({...}) from @graphorin/agent.

Agent registry. Per-session record of every agent that participated, with metadata. Owned by @graphorin/sessions.

AgentEvent<TOutput>. The discriminated event union the agent runtime emits for streaming consumption.

AnyValue. Channel descriptor that uses last-writer-wins on a multi-write step. Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

Approval. A blocking gate raised when a tool's needsApproval predicate (or constant true) fires. Surfaces as the tool.approval.requested agent event; resolved through tool.approval.granted / tool.approval.denied.

Audit log. Tamper-evident SQLite log of every privileged operation. SHA-256 hash chain; encrypted-at-rest by default.

B

Barrier. Channel descriptor that waits for a named set of writers. Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

Bi-temporal. Storage pattern with both a validFrom / validTo window and a recordedAt timestamp. Used by semantic memory.

C

Channel. A typed slot in the workflow engine's per-step state. Each channel has a descriptor (LatestValue, Reducer, Stream, Barrier, Ephemeral, AnyValue, ListAggregate) that defines its merge semantics.

Checkpoint. A serialised snapshot of a workflow thread's state at the end of an execution step.

Conflict pipeline. The five-stage pipeline that decides whether a new fact dedups, supersedes, gets admitted as pending, or is admitted clean. Lives in @graphorin/memory.

Consolidator. Background process that distils long conversations into long-term memory in three phases — light / standard / deep. Lives in @graphorin/memory.

Context engine. The component that compiles the memory-aware system prompt before each agent step.

D

Directive. Workflow-engine primitive that controls the next-step decision (resume, branch, halt). Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

Dispatch. Workflow-engine primitive that schedules dynamic parallel tasks in the next execution step. Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

Durable HITL. Human-in-the-loop that survives a process restart. Powered by RunState.toJSON() / RunState.fromJSON(...) in the agent runtime and pause / resume in the workflow engine.

E

Embedder. Component that produces dense vector representations of text. Default is @graphorin/embedder-transformersjs.

Ephemeral. Channel descriptor whose value lives only for the current step. Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

Episodic memory. The "autobiography" tier — events, decisions, and milestones with bi-temporal validity.

F

Fan-out. agent.fanOut({...}) (a thin wrapper over the standalone runFanOut(...)) — agent-step-level parallelism with bounded concurrency, per-child budgets, and four built-in merge strategies ('concat', 'first-success', 'judge-merge', 'custom').

Filter. Serialisable transform applied to messages crossing a multi-agent handoff boundary. Lives in @graphorin/agent.

H

Handoff. Transfer of control between agents in the same session. Recorded as a typed HandoffRecord.

Hybrid search. Search that fuses dense-vector and full-text (FTS5) results. Default fusion is Reciprocal Rank Fusion with k=60.

I

Idempotency key. Idempotency-Key HTTP header that lets the standalone server deduplicate retried POST requests within the configured TTL.

L

LatestValue. Channel descriptor that overwrites and throws on multi-writer collisions. Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

ListAggregate. Channel descriptor that appends. Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

Locale pack. Per-language regex / predicate set that powers stages 3 and 4 of the conflict pipeline. English ships by default.

M

MCP. Model Context Protocol — a public protocol for tool / prompt / resource servers. Graphorin's client wraps @modelcontextprotocol/sdk over stdio and Streamable HTTP.

Memory tier. One of working / session / episodic / semantic / procedural / shared. Each has its own lifecycle and surface.

Middleware composer. composeProviderMiddleware([...]) from @graphorin/provider. Wraps a provider in a chain validated against the canonical order withTracing → withRetry → withRateLimit → withCostLimit → withCostTracking → withFallback → withRedaction (outermost → innermost). Throws MiddlewareOrderingError on violation; the production-startup hook also refuses to boot a server that does not include withRedaction.

P

pause(value). Workflow primitive that suspends a thread. Lives in @graphorin/workflow. Pairs with resume(directive).

Provider. The single interface every LLM adapter implements. Lives in @graphorin/provider.

Procedural memory. The "how-to" tier — workflows, recipes, learned patterns.

Progress artifact. UTF-8 text artifact persisted via atomic-write .tmp + rename for cross-session continuity. Owned by agent.progress.

R

Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF). Default reranker for hybrid search; combines vector and FTS5 ranks with k=60.

Replay. Reconstruction of a past run from the audit log + JSONL export. Sanitised by default; opt in to live re-execution.

Reducer. Channel descriptor with a custom (prev, next) => merged merge function. Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

RunContext. The context object passed into tool execute(input, ctx) calls. Carries signal, tracer, fetch, scope-bound secrets, run identifiers.

RunState. Serialisable snapshot of an agent run. RunState.toJSON() / RunState.fromJSON(serialised, agent) round-trip the full state.

S

Sandbox tier. 'none' / 'isolated-vm' / 'docker'. Resolved per tool call by resolveSandbox(...) in @graphorin/security.

SecretRef. A <scheme>:<scheme-specific-part> URI that names where a secret lives (e.g. env:OPENAI_API_KEY, keyring:my_key, file:///abs/path, op://vault/item/field). Resolved through a pluggable resolver registry in @graphorin/security.

SecretValue. A wrapper that prevents accidental logging / serialisation of a secret. Interface in @graphorin/core; runtime in @graphorin/security.

Semantic memory. The "facts about you, the world, the task" tier. Bi-temporal; multi-stage conflict resolution.

Sensitivity. The 'public' / 'internal' / 'secret' tag carried by every message, memory row, tool result, and trace attribute.

Session. The unit of conversation that survives across turns and (when persisted) process restarts. Owned by @graphorin/sessions; messages owned by @graphorin/memory.session.*.

Session tier. Memory tier holding the rolling message log.

Stream. Channel descriptor; append-only queue with optional uniqueness. Lives in @graphorin/core/channels.

T

Token counter. Per-provider strategy that estimates the token cost of a message list. Pluggable via @graphorin/provider/counters.

Tool. Typed callable declared with tool({...}) from @graphorin/tools. Carries Zod input / output schemas, Sensitivity, sideEffectClass ('pure' | 'read-only' | 'side-effecting' | 'external-stateful'), needsApproval, and sandbox-tier metadata.

ToolExecutor. Component that runs Tool[] invocations. Parallel-by-default, approval-aware, sandbox-aware.

ToolRegistry. Component that hosts every registered tool with collision policies.

Trigger. Background cron / interval / idle / event registration. Owned by @graphorin/triggers.

W

Working memory. The "current task" tier. Short structured blocks holding what the assistant is doing right now.

Workflow. Durable step-graph execution unit. Owned by @graphorin/workflow.

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