Words we use

A few words carry a lot on these pages. Here is what each one means, in plain terms.

Record. What entered, in the order it entered: a session log, a dataset, a draft, a set of filings. On Habitat, the record is always the subject.

Rule. A check written down before it runs, such as "a write outside the folder the session was started in". A rule says exactly what it counts and what it can't see.

Act. One thing a sentence says: who does what, or what is said about something. Habitat reads a text clause by clause, and each clause holds one or more acts.

Position. Where an act sits: a list of numbers, a short one from the rules and a longer one from the language model, made the same way every time. A position is not a judgment, and it carries none of the words.

Limit. What a rule cannot see. A rule's result is shown with its limit beside it.

Fingerprint. A SHA-256 of a file's exact bytes: a 64-character code. Change one character of the file and the fingerprint changes completely. The same file always gives the same fingerprint, on any computer.

Digest. A fingerprint of something computed from a record, rather than of the file itself. The receipts publish digests, so you can recompute them and compare.

Receipt. A small file that states a question about a record, the answer, the digests behind it, and its limits. Receipts you make in Desk are signed by your browser. Receipts the Foundation publishes are signed by the Foundation and entered in a public log.

Kit. A small download that recomputes one published receipt on your own machine, with one command. It needs Python and numpy, and nothing of ours.

Anchor. An entry in a public, append-only log (Sigstore's Rekor) that shows a file existed, unchanged, at a given time. Anyone can check an anchor offline.

Floor. How much a record's numbers change on their own, when nothing that matters has changed, measured from the record itself (for example, by repeating its own rows at random). A change counts only if it is larger than the floor. The floor is always published with the result.

Key, and DID. Your browser makes a signing key the first time you use Desk. The key never leaves the browser. Its public name looks like did:habitat: followed by 32 characters. Anything you sign on Desk carries that name.

Member. Someone the Foundation has granted membership, by hand. A member's signature also carries the Foundation's signed grant. Membership opens rooms; signing doesn't need it.

Room. A shared space beside a draft where the writer's invited members read the paragraphs the writer shared and leave remarks. Remarks stay in the room. They never change anyone's draft or reading.

Gem. A signed file that carries the positions of the paragraphs you choose, in the order they were read, and their totals: the shape of your reading, with none of your words.

Gem-Space. A room's shared total of the gems its members give, one per person per sitting of the room.

Written down beforehand (declared). A rule, a seed or a threshold set before the run and published with the result, so it can't be changed to suit the answer.

Check. One of the five named checks Record runs: Repeat, Scope, Fingerprint, Published and Signed.

Text, and store. A text is one of the works Words reads against. Its store is Desk's prepared copy of it, read once, with its own fingerprint.

Edition. A corrected version of a receipt or kit, published beside the earlier one, which stays.

Census, and stream. The census tools run Record’s checks over all of a person's or a team's logs. The stream reading reads a month of those records in the order they arrived.

Frontier. Work that ran and is shown with its limits, but is not a receipt.