Glossary

This glossary is the adopter-facing vocabulary source of truth for Scoria's public docs, examples, and dashboard copy.

Core terms

Run

A durable Scoria execution record for one unit of AI work.

• Industry equivalent: workflow run, agent run, or trace root.
• Use when you mean the exact execution handle stored by Scoria, such as run_id.
• Do not use when you mean a long-lived chat session or host-owned business object.
• Related APIs/docs: Scoria.start_run/2, Scoria.resume_run/2, Scoria.get_run/1.

Reviewer

The human inspecting tenant-scoped runs, approvals, traces, eval results, and incidents in Scoria's dashboard.

• Industry equivalent: operator, approver, reviewer, or support engineer.
• Use when naming the person using Scoria's inspection and decision surfaces.
• Do not use as a tenant authority source; the host app owns authentication and authorization.
• Related APIs/docs: ScoriaWeb.ReviewerSurface, dashboard scope resolver docs.

operator remains a legacy/persona alias for reviewer in 0.1.x compatibility text and historical docs. Use operator only for an explicit SRE/on-call job sense or legacy mapping.

Trace

The reviewer-visible execution story of a run: spans, model calls, retrievals, tool calls, approvals, eval scores, replay branches, semantic cache checks, and workflow inspection.

• Industry equivalent: trace or span tree in OpenTelemetry/OpenInference-style observability.
• Use when describing run inspection surfaces and execution flow.
• Do not use to rename stored proof fields such as evidence_refs.
• Related APIs/docs: workflow detail page, trace components, Scoria.get_run_detail/1.

Trace vocabulary aligns with OpenTelemetry/OpenInference-style observability language, but Scoria does not claim an OpenInference-compatible export or trace substrate until that future work ships.

Evidence

Support or proof material attached to a run, incident, eval score, retrieval, citation, or grounding decision.

• Industry equivalent: audit evidence, citation evidence, grounding evidence, or support proof.
• Use for RAG/citation evidence, grounding evidence, evidence_refs, policy proof, breaker evidence, budget evidence, and audit evidence.
• Do not use as the top-level name for a reviewer-facing run inspection surface; use trace.
• Related APIs/docs: eval score evidence, knowledge citations, incident support proof.

RAG/citation evidence and evidence_refs are unchanged evidence vocabulary. Do not introduce a trace-reference storage field or rename stored evidence fields during this terminology migration.

Capability

An adoption surface that can be added after the default runtime is working.

• Industry equivalent: feature area or integration capability.
• Use when discussing optional Scoria surfaces such as bounded handoff, semantic cache, optional knowledge base, and remote connectors.
• Do not use lane for adopter-facing capability grouping.
• Related APIs/docs: adoption guides, connector guide, knowledge guide.

Verification suite

A proof command contract that verifies an adoption or maintainer surface.

• Industry equivalent: test suite, conformance suite, or release gate.
• Use for commands such as $ mix test.adoption, $ mix test.runtime_to_handoff, and $ mix scoria.release_preview.
• Do not call these proof commands verification lanes in new adopter-facing docs.
• Related APIs/docs: Scoria.VerificationSuites, reviewer verification guide.

Scoped context

The deliberately bounded subset of host context passed into a same-run handoff.

• Industry equivalent: scoped prompt context or constrained delegation context.
• Use for public handoff inputs that the host intentionally curates.
• Do not use to imply full transcript, socket state, provider session, or secret transfer.
• Related APIs/docs: scoped_context:, projected_context: compatibility alias, Scoria.start_handoff_run/3.

Semantic cache

An opt-in, tenant-partitioned reuse path for explicitly safe read-only work.

• Industry equivalent: semantic response cache or embedding-backed cache.
• Use when describing cache profiles and cache hits/misses.
• Do not describe it as a generic fast path for arbitrary writes or unsafe work.
• Related APIs/docs: Scoria.SemanticCache.Profile, Scoria.SemanticLane compatibility alias, semantic_cache: [profile: MyApp.CacheProfile].

Knowledge base

An optional retrieval and grounding surface backed by host-selected knowledge content.

• Industry equivalent: RAG knowledge base, retrieval corpus, or vector store-backed corpus.
• Use when the adopter intentionally enables retrieval, citations, and grounding.
• Do not imply knowledge base setup is required for the default runtime.
• Related APIs/docs: optional knowledge verification suite and retrieval/grounding docs.

Grounding

The act of tying model output or a decision back to cited support material.

• Industry equivalent: citation grounding, retrieval grounding, or source attribution.
• Use for RAG and citation proof.
• Do not rename grounding evidence to trace evidence.
• Related APIs/docs: knowledge base docs, citation evidence, eval support proof.

Bounded handoff

A same-run delegation to another role with host-curated input and scoped context.

• Industry equivalent: constrained handoff, delegated subtask, or workflow branch.
• Use when one role delegates a narrow slice of work inside the same durable run.
• Do not use when starting a separate host workflow or copying broad runtime state.
• Related APIs/docs: Scoria.start_handoff_run/3, Scoria.get_run_detail/1.

Legacy and industry equivalents

Compatibility aliases

The following old names and options remain accepted during the 0.1.x compatibility window:

• ScoriaWeb.OperatorSurface delegates to ScoriaWeb.ReviewerSurface.
• Scoria.Observe.OperatorBroadcast delegates to Scoria.Observe.ReviewerBroadcast.
• Scoria.VerificationLanes delegates to Scoria.VerificationSuites.
• Scoria.SemanticLane remains accepted as a semantic cache profile compatibility surface.
• lane: remains accepted where new docs prefer profile:.
• lane_key remains the stored semantic cache key field and is not renamed.
• projected_context: remains accepted where new docs prefer scoped_context:.

Compatibility aliases are naming bridges only. They do not create a database migration, rename evidence_refs, rename lane_key, or change tenant authority. Host apps still own identity, policy values, authorization, and business truth.