Glossary

One name per idea, and the names other systems use for the same idea. Read the second column when a word here does not match the word you arrived with.

After this page you know which word to use, and which word you already knew means the same thing.

One idea usually has several names — one from the paper it was described in, one from the product you last used, one someone coined in a hallway. Every alias you carry costs a translation on every conversation. So: one name per idea, and the Also called column is the translation table. If you arrived with a different word, find it there.

The rule that generates the rest: name the thing, not the metaphor. A word that only works if you already know what it stands for teaches nothing.

Reading an operation

The vocabulary of a single API call. This is the set worth learning first — everything else in these docs is written in it.

Term	What it is	Also called
capability	The first path segment after `/v1/` — `agents`, `iam`, `event`. The unit a product is organised into.	service, module, resource group
operation	One thing you can do. Named once, reachable from every surface.	endpoint, method, action, call
verb	The word naming an operation in the CLI — `hanzo <capability> <verb>`.	subcommand, action
address	Where an operation is reached: method plus path, e.g. `POST /v1/agents`.	endpoint, route, URL, URI
surface	One of the four ways to reach an operation: HTTP, CLI, SDK, MCP. The operation is the same; only the spelling changes.	interface, transport, client
request / response	What you send; what comes back.	—

path means the path portion of an address, or a parameter located in it. URL means a full absolute one. Neither is a synonym for address.

Who is calling

Term	What it is	Also called
caller	Whoever is making this request. The everyday word, and the right one in most sentences.	client, consumer, requester
principal	The identity a request acts as, once the credential has been checked. Use it when that binding is the subject.	subject, actor, identity
credential	Anything that proves a principal. The genus; the next two rows are species.	—
key	A credential you hold as a string. Two classes: `sk-` secret (server-side only) and `pk-` publishable (safe in a browser).	API key, secret key
token	A credential with an expiry and claims inside it.	access token, bearer token, JWT
claim	One assertion carried inside a token (RFC 7519).	attribute, assertion
scope	The subset of an authority a credential may exercise (RFC 6749).	permission, grant
member	A person's membership in an org. A user is a person; a member is that relation.	seat
application	A non-human principal — an integration, a service, a bot.	service account, machine identity, client

What you act on

Term	What it is	Also called
org	The tenant. The boundary every record is scoped to, and for most capabilities a physically separate database.	tenant, organization, account, workspace, team
project	A scope inside one org. Never an alternative to an org.	environment, workspace
environment	A label on a deploy — derived, not a stored resource.	stage, tier
agent	A definition: a model, a system prompt, and a set of tool names.	assistant, bot, persona
session	One continuing conversation with an agent.	thread, conversation
run	One execution of something — an agent turn, a workflow, a job. Bounded, has a status, can be read back.	execution, invocation, job, task
sandbox	An isolated compute environment with a lease that ends it.	container, pod, workspace, VM
workflow	Steps composed into one durable execution.	pipeline, DAG, orchestration
release	The artifact a deploy produces. `deploy` is the verb, `release` is the noun.	build, version, revision
webhook	A subscription that delivers events to a URL you own.	callback, subscription
event	One thing that happened, in an envelope.	message, record, notification
credit	The unit of account. 1,000 credits = $1.00.	token (never — that word is a credential here), unit
balance	What you currently have.	—

Names that are ours

The house vocabulary. None of these is guessable, so each gets a sentence.

Name	What it is
IAM	Identity and Access Management — the one service that issues and checks every credential.
KMS	Key Management Service — where secrets live. Nothing else stores one.
o11y	Observability, abbreviated by letter count (o + 11 letters + y). Logs, metrics, traces.
ZAP	Zero-Copy App Proto — the binary protocol our services speak to each other.
visor	The compute you rent: machines, GPUs, clusters.
enso	Our frontier model family.
Zen	Our open-weight model family.
Base	The managed instance product — a database and backend per org.
Pack	The zero-configuration builder that turns a repository into a deployable image.
egress	Outbound traffic. In billing it is the per-gigabyte charge; in architecture it is the one process permitted to make outbound calls holding a credential.
HIP	Hanzo Improvement Proposal — a numbered design document.
Quasar	The consensus engine, from Lux, with a post-quantum certificate profile.
zt	Hanzo Zero Trust — the identity-addressed overlay network. Built on OpenZiti.
zrok	The sharing layer over that overlay: one command publishes a local port.

Distribution and storage

Only the terms these docs actually use.

Term	What it is	Also called
replica	A process holding a copy of some data.	follower, secondary, standby
writer	The one replica permitted to write a given database.	primary, leader, master
version	A number that only increases, compared to reject a stale writer or a stale read.	fencing token, epoch, term, ballot, generation
lock	Mutual exclusion. Held until released; no time limit.	mutex
lease	A lock with an expiry. The expiry is the entire difference — it is what lets another process safely conclude the holder is gone.	time-bounded lock
quorum	How many members must agree before a decision counts.	majority, threshold
consensus	Agreement among processes on one value despite failures.	agreement
pin	A recorded exact version that a build resolves to.	lock, constraint
tag	A mutable name for an image. Two reads of one tag may differ.	label
digest	The content hash of an image. Immutable by construction.	content address, sha

Words we do not use

Not used	Use instead	Why
endpoint, route	address	Three words for the location of one operation.
tenant, organization, workspace, account	org	One tenancy primitive, one name.
execution, invocation, job, task	run	Same object at four ages.
fencing token, epoch, term, ballot	version	Four papers, one number.
lease, where nothing expires	lock	The expiry is the definition, and it decides whether failover is possible.
wire, seam, glue, plumbing	name the interface	A metaphor tells a reader nothing about the type.
plane, for anything but control and data	name the thing	Control plane and data plane are from RFC 3746. A set of services is not a plane.

Words that mean two things. secret is a key class (sk-), a product (/v1/secrets) and a loose synonym for credential — only the first two are correct here. store is a provisioned datastore instance, not a database file and not object storage. node is a compute machine in visor and a voting participant in consensus. When either could be read, say which.