Specgent glossary

---
title: Specgent glossary
description: Terms used across the Specgent documentation.
---

## Initiative chain

One line of work, from the idea down to the Slice Specification. A chain is
created by the first thing placed in it, and the levels above its entry point
stay empty.

## Operation

One manually invoked step of the pipeline. Each operation reads bounded inputs,
writes only its declared outputs and then stops.

## Sealed revision

Immutable bytes with a content hash, held in the content-addressed store. A
later revision is a new revision, and nothing overwrites an accepted one.
Sealing is not acceptance.

## Approval

A separate record naming an authority, a revision and an approval identifier.
Which role may approve depends on the document type.

## Verdict

A review's opinion about one exact revision: `PASS`, `PASS_WITH_ADVISORIES`,
`REVISE`, `PROVISIONAL` or `BLOCKED`. A verdict is not readiness, and the two
never appear on the same record.

## Readiness

A derived fact about a Feature, computed by replaying the recorded history
rather than declared by any operation. The vocabulary is `not-ready`, `partial`,
`development-ready`, `blocked`, `stale` and `not-applicable`, and it stops at
`development-ready` on purpose.

## Grounding

A promoted revision of scanned workspace context. Operations that require
context refuse without it, and a run that proceeded without it is recorded as
ungrounded.

## Entry mode

How an operation was entered, recorded with the run: `native`, `imported`,
`revise` or `diagnostic`. A diagnostic run names the missing prerequisite and
the command that would supply it, and produces no artifact.

## Portable description section

The part of a specification that a planner or tracker needs, embedded as a
deterministic projection of the canonical register rather than written beside
it.

## Undetermined

A `doctor` result that is neither pass nor fail, because the check could not
reach a verdict. It is never read as a pass: a skip is not a pass.