Glossary

A#

Actor — the person, organization, service, agent, device, or provider-specific entity to which a Timeline Provider attributes a Timeline Entry.

Actor Policy — document rules that restrict which attributed actor and source categories may invoke particular operations directly. It does not create cross-channel delegated authority.

Agreement — a document preserving complete authored terms while optionally linking selected clauses to reusable operational processes. Agreement architecture in this site is design-stage unless an exact published package says otherwise.

B#

BEX — deterministic computation represented as Blue data. A BEX program executes against immutable declared inputs and returns values and effects; it does not perform ambient I/O.

Blue document — the root node of a selected serialized slice of the Blue graph. It can be a scalar, list, object, pure reference, or a complex contract-bearing shared situation.

BlueId — the content address derived from Blue's semantic identity pipeline. It proves exact content identity under the applicable rules, not authorship, authority, freshness, or external truth.

Bootstrap — an authorized protocol for creating and initializing a new logical document, its sessions, Timelines, participant mappings, and initial messages.

C#

Channel — a contract that decides whether an event belongs to a role and what payload a bound handler sees. A Timeline Channel binds a provider-backed Timeline and actor to a role.

Completeness frontier — a provider commitment that all accepted Timeline entries before a boundary have been revealed and no later accepted entry will be assigned before that boundary.

Contracts processor — the deterministic runtime that maps one current document Root and one eligible event to a new Root, emitted Root events, and gas.

D#

Deferred — a feeder decision meaning required evidence is temporarily unavailable. It is different from ineligible or withheld.

Document network — several bounded logical documents connected by references, Requests, Responses, subscriptions, bootstrap, operation calls, or provider facts.

E#

Embedded scope — an active child processing scope inside an owning Root. It has local contracts and state boundaries but commits as part of the Root transition.

Epoch — a platform or session sequence label for a committed processed document state. The state itself has an exact BlueId.

F#

Feeder — the external coordination component that discovers active Timeline Channels, verifies provider evidence, closes complete time windows, orders entries, checks eligibility and Mandates, and delivers one original eligible entry to the processor.

M#

Mandate — a living Blue authority document with an authority holder, authorized actor, guarantor, bounded target or responder scope, request constraints, lifecycle, and historical validity at the action time.

Message — the common typed communication basis for Requests, Responses, Operation Requests, chat, lifecycle notices, provider work, and other causal communication.

MyOS — a practical portal and operating environment built on Blue. It may provide sessions, Timelines, document operation, Mandate services, and product views, but it is not synonymous with the Blue protocol.

O#

Operation — a callable declaration associated with a document channel and request shape. A handler or workflow implements its deterministic consequence.

Order — one concrete commercial or service occurrence. A standing Agreement or Offer can authorize or inform many Orders.

P#

PayNote — a document governing one payment process: participant requests, conditions, amount decisions, provider Responses, and lifecycle around a transaction. It is not the bank ledger or payment rail.

Principal Actor — an actor category attributed as exercising its own primary authority. Sensitive operations may additionally require a strong source profile.

Provider — an institution or service that supplies a claim it can credibly make: content availability, actor attribution, completeness, identity, permit state, service outcome, delivery, or payment rail result.

Purpose — descriptive content explaining why a participant or agent is present and what it intends to handle. Purpose grants no authority by itself.

R#

Request / Response — a typed solicitation and its answer. A Response points to the exact Request occurrence through inResponseTo; correlation and threading may use separate application keys.

Root — the authoritative document scope changed by one processor invocation. Embedded work may react internally, but one successful invocation commits one new Root.

S#

Source — provider-attributed information about how an action reached the Timeline Provider, such as a browser session, API call, hardware device, or document-mediated request. Source is not the actor.

Subscription — a provider-mediated stream of selected events and optional snapshots from another logical document or linked-document anchor.

T#

Timeline — an append-only, tamper-evident, provider-backed perspective. In the current architecture a provider assigns at most one entry to a microsecond within one Timeline.

Timeline Entry — the provider-backed envelope containing Timeline identity, predecessor, timestamp, actor, optional source and authority evidence, and the business Message.

Timeline Provider — the trust role that authenticates appenders, attributes actors and sources, assigns Timeline timestamps, preserves history, serves evidence, and closes completeness.

W#

Withheld / ineligible — a feeder decision meaning evidence resolves and proves that an entry does not satisfy identity, authority, target-state, operation, or request rules. It is recorded but not delivered to the processor.