# Glossary URL: https://docs.hanzo.ai/docs/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 `. | subcommand, action | | **address** | Where an operation is reached: method plus path, e.g. `POST /v1/agent`. | 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. | | **Zen** | The generative model family: open weights, for reasoning, code, vision, speech and embeddings. [Zen](https://docs.hanzo.ai/docs/models/zen). | | **Enso** | Hanzo's own model family: a free lane (`enso-auto`) and three paid tiers, `enso-flash`, `enso-pro` and `enso-ultra`, each a chain of frontier models under one price; also the router behind `model: "auto"`. [Enso](https://docs.hanzo.ai/docs/models/enso). | | **Kai** | The decision model: typed, calibrated answers to bounded questions, no generated text. [Kai](https://docs.hanzo.ai/docs/models/kai). | | **Hanzo Decision** | Kai, Decision Programs, Decision Packages and policy, served at `POST /v1/decisions`. | | **Decision Program** | A versioned graph of typed nodes — deterministic, Kai, Zen, solver, human, policy — over evidence. | | **Decision Package** | The hashed, replayable record of one program run. | | **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.