Glossary
The words of the design, each defined once, as the capture design
(design/capture/design.md) uses them. headwater’s and eddy’s books
use the same words for the same things. A number in parentheses cites
Flywheel’s statement, whose record formats and moves millpond keeps.
| word | meaning |
|---|---|
| adapter | a program that knows one source: it lists the source’s events, keys each one, fetches the raw material, marks a capture that is its own excerpt, and prints contract lines (115) |
| adapter part | a plugin’s part of the adapter kind: a command, the shape of its configuration, and the secrets it needs (228) |
| answered | the move that names the claim or record that settled a signal |
| attach | the move that puts a signal on an item already sent |
| batch | the moves a curation session proposes together, which the operator accepts or changes and one moves call writes in one commit |
| brief | the text an item’s work starts from, written by the curation session and kept on the item |
| capture | the record of one source event: its key, its source, its event date and a pointer to its raw material; the same event captured twice is one capture (111) |
| capture contract | the JSON Lines an adapter prints and every host takes, each line holding exactly one of capture, cursor or done |
| challenge | the move that weighs a signal against a claim, in an inbox beside Flywheel’s claims |
| bolt | in crew, a team’s branch of work: its units and chores land on it, and it lands on the shared branch |
| chore | in crew, a piece of work that needs no design of its own, such as a tool’s bump; a route move offers one |
| claim | in Flywheel, a standing statement of what a repository must satisfy; answered and challenge name one |
| conformance pack | contract lines and the records a host must write from them, with the meeting checks; every host and every adapter part passes it |
| curation | a Claude session that proposes one move per signal, in batches, through millpond’s tools; the operator accepts or changes each batch (116) |
| conclusion | what a sounding ends on: the answer, its evidence, what it would change, the work it proposes and what stays open; the operator accepts it, sends it back for another round, or drops it |
| cursor | a value only its adapter understands, kept from the part’s last run that ended in done and handed back on the next |
| cut | where millpond ends an own-excerpt signal’s text: at a line under the inbox’s limit, 8 KiB unless its settings say otherwise. A closing line says how much the raw record holds beyond it |
| dedupe | millpond’s lookup of each capture’s key in every capture the inbox holds, so a key lands once |
| drop | the move that records why a signal leads nowhere |
| event date | event_at: when the event happened, never when it was captured (118) |
| excerpt | the verbatim text a signal quotes from its source, with its position (113) |
| flywheel branch | the branch of crew’s state repository that holds a partition’s signals; it becomes the partition’s inbox |
| flume | the tool that launches and tracks one agent in one worktree through a kind’s stages, on the host it runs on, and tidies the place when the work lands or is dropped (its book) |
| folder drop | the built-in adapter that makes one capture of each file dropped in a watched folder |
| inbox | a git repository, or a branch in one, holding captures, signals, moves and items in Flywheel’s record formats |
| item | the unit of work: the signals curation joined, one or many, with its brief and its sends; Flywheel’s proposed intent (109) |
| join | the move that makes an item from signals, or grows one still proposed |
| key | a source event’s identity, the same from every host and every run (111) |
| kind | a signal’s type, one of constraint, ask, question, commitment and reaction (113); the kind a send names, a fix or a change, is flume’s word for a list of stages |
| meeting file | the built-in adapter for a meeting’s transcript file |
| move | the one standing decision on a signal: drop, answered, challenge, join, attach or route, each with a stated consequence (107, 116) |
| operator | the person who accepts or changes each batch of moves, sends items, and decides each conclusion; on its own, the user |
| own excerpt | a capture is its own excerpt when its line carries the signal’s fields, so millpond writes its one signal as it lands; a release is one |
| part | one thing of one kind in a plugin; an inbox’s settings name the adapter parts it runs |
| partition | in crew, one domain of work with its own teams and its own flywheel branch |
| planner | crew’s agent that orders items across teams and turns each into a chore or a unit |
| plugin | the installable unit in every host, holding parts; Flywheel’s statement calls it a package, and a named set of parts a bundle (228, 284) |
| pointer | <host>:<path>, where a capture’s raw material is banked (217h) |
| raw bank | a host’s store of raw material, under millpond’s data directory, keyed by inbox and capture; never in git |
| raw material | the event as its source served it, whole: notes, a transcript, a log; the adapter writes it as raw files |
| reader | a Claude session that turns an unread capture into signals with millpond’s read tool |
| rec | the plain-text record format of GNU recutils, in which records rest |
| route | the move that offers a chore, which becomes an item of one, or an ask, which millpond records |
| run | one start of an adapter part by millpond run, complete when it ends in done |
| schedule | when a part runs: five-field cron, a missed run caught up once |
| send | millpond giving one item to flume, as a fix or a change with its brief, or an item that asks a question to a sounding |
| settings | millpond.toml at the inbox’s root: its parts, its cut, its reader command, and where items go |
| setup | one of the three ways millpond runs: on its own, with crew, or with Flywheel |
| signal | one assertion from a capture: its kind, who asserted it, its subjects, the assertion in a sentence, the verbatim excerpt with its position, and the claims it argues with; never changed once written (113) |
| sounding | one question, worked by one session in one place, ending on one conclusion; also the tool that runs them (its book) |
| source | where events come from, named in each capture: release, meeting, folder, deploy |
| tick | millpond tick, which runs every part of an inbox whose schedule is due |
| unit | in crew, one designed piece of a team’s work, landed on its bolt |
| unmoved | a signal with no move yet |
| unread | a capture with no excerpt, waiting for a reader |
| watch list | the list of tools a repository pins, from which headwater reads each pin; headwater’s book defines it |
| weight | how much a proposed item’s signals count: how many, from which sources, over what span, by event date (109, 118) |