Identity is not a name match
Canonical entities require compatible, attributable support; ambiguity can remain unresolved.
Glossary
Words with operational meaning.
Precise memory language helps an agent—and the people reviewing it—distinguish evidence from inference, current context from history, and retrieval from authority.
Why terminology matters
Useful memory preserves distinctions.
A polished sentence can conceal whether context was explicit, inferred, stale, disputed, or out of scope. These definitions describe the intended product and trust model—not a claim that every beta journey is complete.
Time remains part of meaning
Current, historical, superseded, inferred, conflicting, and uncertain are not interchangeable states.
Evidence is inspectable
Provenance explains support and lineage without pretending that a citation guarantees truth.
Definitions are written for product and implementation discussions. Availability, integration details, retention, and customer-facing correction behavior still depend on the verified beta deployment.
A
- ApplicationAgent
- A software participant that uses tools or context to perform a task. An agent's permissions and authority remain outside the memory it retrieves.
- Customer surfaceAsk
- An evidence-grounded answer to an explicit question, with citations and an honest insufficient-context state when authorized memory cannot support an answer.Not a promise of a correct answer or a customer-facing query engine.
- Source boundaryAuthorized context
- Source material the participant or responsible organization is permitted to provide and use for the agreed deployment and purpose.Organizational context can still contain personal or sensitive data.
B
- RetrievalBounded retrieval
- Returning a limited set of already-published memory appropriate to the named subject, agent, scope, and task rather than exposing an indiscriminate history dump.
C
- Memory modelCanonical entity
- A durable identity for a promoted person, organization, project, product, service, system, automation, or other long-lived subject, including its supported roles and aliases.
- Memory modelCanonical memory
- The maintained, readable memory associated with a canonical entity or other published page, recomputed from active qualified support rather than treated as an append-only transcript.
- Customer surfaceCapture
- The customer action for adding authorized text, supported files, or supported public URLs and seeing their real processing state.Use Capture in customer copy; ingestion and job details belong to technical contexts.
- EvidenceCitation
- A bounded reference that helps a person inspect which authorized source or provenance supported a memory or synthesis.A citation is not a guarantee that the source or interpretation is correct.
- AvailabilityClosed beta
- A selective, managed evaluation with an agreed source, deployment, support, retention, and review boundary. It is not open registration or general availability.
- Memory stateConflict
- A state in which material active support disagrees and the disagreement is preserved rather than silently reduced to one confident statement.
- TrustCorrection
- A challenge or repair to wrong or incomplete memory that preserves relevant evidence and history instead of simply replacing visible prose without lineage.The complete self-serve customer correction journey remains beta work.
D
- BetaDesign partner
- A selected participant who helps define the workflow and actively evaluates source coverage, memory quality, usefulness, sensitivity, and operational boundaries with the Substrate team.
E
- TrustEvidence
- The attributable authorized support used to establish, qualify, or challenge an identity, claim, relationship, or change.
- Customer surfaceExplore
- The customer experience for browsing canonical memory and relationships through pages and useful groupings.Not a database administration surface or an entity ledger.
- Memory classExplicit direction
- An instruction or preference stated by an authorized person and retained as direction. It can inform an agent without granting external authority.
F
- Beta conceptFounder briefing
- A proposed selective, managed briefing around people, commitments, and material change for the founder design-partner beta.A beta promise in development, not a currently available self-serve product mode.
G
- BetaGTM beta
- The closed-beta path designed to test whether cited organizational memory improves continuity and judgment in a customer-facing agent workflow.This describes the evaluation goal, not a proven customer outcome.
H
- Memory stateHistorical
- Context that was previously true or relevant and is retained to explain chronology rather than presented as the current state.
I
- Product conceptImportant update
- A consequential organizational change that passes explicit materiality eligibility and can explain what changed, why it matters, and which evidence supports it.Not every event, reprocessing completion, or model inference is an important update.
- Memory classInference
- An evidence-bounded interpretation kept distinct from an observed fact, explicit statement, or direction and qualified when used.
- Retrieval stateInsufficient context
- The honest state used when available authorized memory does not support a confident answer. The appropriate recovery may be a different question, Explore, or Capture.
- DeploymentIsolated environment
- A deployment boundary in which one participant's corpus, identity, credentials, jobs, logs, backups, support, export, and deletion path belong to that environment.Isolation is not the same as a proven shared multi-tenant role and authorization system.
M
- AvailabilityManaged beta
- A beta in which source selection, integration, review, and operational support are performed jointly rather than exposed as a self-serve setup flow.
- Memory modelMaterial change
- A supported change that affects customer understanding, a decision, commitment, relationship, risk, or organizational action—not merely a new timestamp or processing event.
- RetrievalMemory card
- A concise projection of already-published entity context returned for retrieval, excluding private workflow records and bounded to permitted support.A memory card is not a complete profile of a person or organization.
- ArchitectureMemory layer
- The system beneath an application or agent workflow that maintains durable identity, qualified context, provenance, and scoped retrieval across interactions.
O
- Memory qualityObservation time
- When a source established or observed a claim. It helps distinguish freshness and chronology from retrieval rank.
- ProductOrganizational memory
- Authorized context retained for a defined organizational unit so people or agents can recover what was learned, what changed, and what evidence supports it.Organizational framing does not make personal data non-personal.
P
- Customer surfacePage
- A readable canonical memory containing supported context, relationships, change, provenance, and applicable history for inspection.
- ArchitecturePrivate ledger
- Non-customer workflow state for source generations, detailed evidence references, unresolved identity, claims, relationships, conflicts, decisions, projection work, and deletion state.It is not a second customer-searchable memory surface.
- EvidenceProvenance
- The source and lineage explaining where a memory came from, which contribution supported it, and how it can be inspected or challenged.
- ArchitecturePublished memory
- Safe, qualified canonical pages and bounded memory units available to permitted search or retrieval. Private claims, raw events, and unresolved workflow state remain outside it.
R
- Memory modelRelationship
- An explicit or evidence-backed connection between canonical memories, such as a role, commitment, ownership, dependency, or other meaningful association.
- Data boundaryRetention
- How long each category of source, derived memory, operational record, provider copy, and backup is kept under the deployment's stated procedures and agreements.There is no universal public retention period for every beta deployment.
S
- AuthorizationScope
- The bounded context in which memory may be retrieved or used, such as a named organization, account, participant, subject, agent, or task.
- Customer surfaceSearch
- Direct lookup of known published pages and context. It is distinct from maintaining canonical memory and does not expose vector controls as the customer model.
- ArchitectureSource contribution
- The entities, claims, relationships, evidence, and temporal bounds attributed to one processing generation of a source. A later successful generation can replace it.
- Memory stateSuperseded
- A prior claim or source generation displaced by newer active support while remaining available as qualified history where appropriate.
U
- Memory stateUncertain
- A state used when evidence, identity, or interpretation is not strong enough for an unqualified statement.
Terms we avoid as shortcuts
No adjective should erase the boundary.
“Complete,” “infallible,” “secure,” “private,” “compliant,” and “autonomous” each imply evidence the current beta does not universally establish. Name the source, state, control, scope, and limit instead.
Say what is unknown
Use uncertain, conflicting, unavailable, or insufficient context rather than confident filler.
Name the control
Describe isolation, authentication, retention, provider, or deletion facts without blanket assurance.
Keep claims inspectable
Distinguish an implemented mechanism, a beta outcome under evaluation, and a future product direction.
Put the terms into context
Follow one source through the memory lifecycle.
See how authorization, replaceable contributions, identity resolution, qualification, publication, scoped retrieval, and correction fit together.