Glossary
A quick reference for the terms you’ll meet across the workspace, the brain, and the sync contract.
Access tiers
Section titled “Access tiers”Every piece of content carries a tier. Authors write a friendly label; it normalizes to a canonical value on ingest.
| Friendly label | Canonical | Syncs? |
|---|---|---|
private, personal | admin | Never |
team | team | Yes — to the brain |
client, company | external | Yes — outward surface |
admin/private— never leaves your machine. The CLI default-denies it before any network call; the brain independently rejects it with a 422.team— visible to all team members on the brain.external/client/company— the outward-facing surface for stakeholders.
Core terms
Section titled “Core terms”access — the YAML frontmatter field on a file that declares its tier (e.g. access: team). A file with no access field does not sync — the CLI reports it as blocked.
audience — the tier column on a decision row in the decision log (the log’s Audience column). An external-tier key receives only audience: "external" decision rows. (Distinct from a file’s access frontmatter, though both express the same tier vocabulary.)
row_key — the stable identifier used for diff-sync. For a file it’s the relative path from the workspace root (e.g. 2-work/sprint-1-retro.md); for a task or decision row it’s the row’s id. A push with the same row_key and a new checksum updates the existing record in place; the same checksum is a no-op.
Harness — a multi-agent Claude Code skill in .claude/skills/ that spawns focused sub-agents and adds adversarial verification so its output is trustworthy. It’s a read-only template (it returns data; the caller writes). See Harnesses.
OKF (Open Knowledge Framework) — the structured link graph the workspace maintains. Files carry links: in frontmatter pointing to related decisions, tasks, or documents; /okf-traverse answers questions by following the graph rather than full-text search. aios pull-bundle fetches the graph from the brain for offline traversal.
Blueprint — the team’s standardized tool set (its integration selections). A team lead publishes it with aios push blueprint; members fetch it with aios pull blueprint into .aios/blueprint.json so everyone starts from the same baseline. See Integrations.
Sidecar — the ingestion/ Python connector service that runs alongside the Team Brain. It’s HTTP-only to the brain and is the canonical pusher for some ingest paths (e.g. codebase scans).
The workspace spine
Section titled “The workspace spine”The six numbered folders every workspace shares, with their default tier:
| Folder | Purpose | Default tier | Syncs? |
|---|---|---|---|
0-context/ | Charter/scope (consultant) or role/OKRs (employee) | team | Yes |
1-inbox/ | Raw inputs, transcripts, brain pulls | admin | Never |
2-work/ | Deliverables, working documents | team | Yes |
3-log/ | Decision log, tasks, hours | admin | Never |
4-shared/ | Client-facing or company output | external | Yes |
5-personal/ | Private scratch | admin | Never |
See Your Workspace for the full model.
API key format
Section titled “API key format”Per-member API keys are always aios_<key_id>_<secret>, SHA-256 hashed at rest and shown once at creation. They authenticate the aios CLI; people authenticate to the dashboard separately (invite-only magic link).