Terms

These documents use ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English. That standard permits words outside its dictionary only as Technical Names and Technical Verbs, and only when each term has one meaning. This page gives those terms.

Each term below has exactly one meaning in these documents. Where a term also has a common English meaning, use only the meaning on this page.

Technical Names

Term	Meaning
Writ	The tool: the language, the schema, and the runtime. Written with a capital letter.
writ	The document that states the terms of one engagement. Written with a small letter.
registrar	The runtime that runs the loop, examines each action, and writes the record.
mandate	The goal of a writ, as a condition on the world.
grant	A permission for one type of action.
bound	A limit on what a run can spend.
invariant	A condition that must stay true during the whole run.
obligation	A command that must pass before the registrar accepts satisfaction.
satisfaction	The proof that the work of the mandate is complete.
remedy	The response to a breach.
breach	An event where an action or a run breaks a term.
strike	One breach in a count of permitted breaches.
clause	One item in a list of terms.
layer	The name of who makes a check: letter, judgment, or assent.
letter	The layer where a machine makes the check.
judgment	The layer where a judge model makes the check.
assent	The layer where a person makes the decision.
record	The store that holds each action, each check, and each decision.
entry	One line of the record.
run	One execution of one writ.
iteration	One turn of the loop: the model gets the messages, and the model answers.
holder	The model that holds the writ and does the work.
judge	The model that examines a judgment clause. The judge is never the holder.
issuer	The person who issues the writ.
engagement	The local configuration of the holder, the judge, the sandbox, and the assent transport.
sandbox	The place where shell commands run.
checkpoint	The time when a judge makes a check.
placeholder	A name in braces that gets a value when a person issues the writ.
attestation	The entry that shows that the registrar accepted satisfaction.
sidecar mode	The mode where the registrar governs an MCP server at the tool boundary.
transport	The way that a person receives a request for assent.
agent	A model with tools, in a loop.
model	A large language model.
MCP	The Model Context Protocol.

Technical Verbs

Term	Meaning
to issue	To start a run of a writ.
to amend	To change a term of a writ.
to engage	To connect to a model and give it work.
to bind	To give a value to a placeholder.
to halt	To stop a run and not continue it.
to revert	To undo the effect of an action.
to escalate	To stop a run and ask a person.
to inform	To tell the model or the person which clause failed.
to attenuate	To make authority smaller.

Terms that these documents do not use

To keep one meaning for each word, these documents do not use these words:

Not used	Used instead
execute, invoke	run, do
ensure	make sure that
permit (as a noun)	permission
abort, kill, terminate	stop, halt
leverage, utilize	use
workflow (for a writ)	writ
policy (for the terms)	terms, clause
prompt (for the mandate)	mandate
guardrail	invariant, bound, grant
approve (for the layer)	assent