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).
Organ systems — the eight architectural capabilities of the Team Brain (knowledge, ingestion, context, actions, identity, policy, audit, feedback). See The 8 organ systems.
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).