Dictionary

---
name: dictionary
description: "The sage dictionary: sage's approved words, one meaning each, and the words not to say. Apply to any text an agent writes for a person in sage mode: briefs, reports, findings, pages and the README."
license: MIT
metadata:
  source: "sage's own words, from the design of task T9 (run R40) and the rename of task T995, approved by the owner"
---

<!-- Generated by scripts/build.mjs from the sources; edit the source, then run npm run build. -->

# The sage dictionary

These are sage's approved words: one word for one thing, and one meaning for each word. Every brief, report, page and the README uses them. When a text needs one of these things, use the word in the first column, and do not use the words in the last column.

## Words

| Word | Meaning | Do not say |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **request** | What the owner asks for in the chat, in the owner's words, before sage frames it. | ask, ticket, issue, prompt |
| **release** | A version that the owner ships, such as 1.0: it holds milestones and single tasks, and it is optional. | version (alone), launch, sprint |
| **milestone** | A request that sage runs as two or more tasks for one goal, where at least one task waits for another. It has a goal, a done condition (a count of merged tasks), a breakdown that the owner approves, and one pilot task. | program (say "program" only for a computer program), project (a project is one repository and its logbook), epic, initiative, plan, roadmap |
| **task** | One unit of work in one project, with one route and at most one pull request. It is in at most one milestone or, outside one, in a release, and it may wait for other tasks of its logbook ("waits for": it builds and merges only after they are merged or concluded). It ends in one of three states: merged (its pull request is in main), concluded (a route with no build step, such as investigate, ended with a clean evidence review) or abandoned (its work stopped for good, from any state). | job, ticket, issue, item, unit, phase, step |
| **step** | One block of a task's route, done by one agent role: design, arena, pe, build, code-review, security-review, ux-review, qa, investigate, evidence-review. | stage, phase; never "step" for a task of a milestone (the approved plan's "step 0 to 4" are tasks T4 to T8) |
| **route** | The ordered steps of one task, set by its size and risk flags. | pipeline, workflow, flow, process |
| **run** | One agent's work on one step of a task, from brief to report; it has an id such as R12. Also the PE check of a breakdown. | job, attempt, session, invocation, execution |
| **agent** | A Claude Code subagent that does one run; the role (implementer, qa, …) says what it does. | worker, bot, assistant, model (the model is the agent's model) |
| **chief** | The chief of staff: the main session that frames tasks, writes briefs, records the state and asks the owner; it changes no files. It frames milestones too. | orchestrator, manager, lead, coordinator, main agent |
| **brief** | What the chief gives an agent at the start of a run, in the ten fields (GOAL to STANDING). A task that waits for others gets their final reports in full in CONTEXT. | prompt, instructions, ticket, spec |
| **report** | What an agent gives back at the end of a run, in the seven fields (STATUS to BRANCH). | summary, output, result (RESULT is one field of the report), handoff |
| **artifact** | A file or record that a run takes in or gives out and sage keeps: a brief, report, steer message, transcript, branch, commit or pull request. | deliverable, output, attachment, asset |
| **finding** | One problem that a review or QA reports, with a severity (high, medium or low), a triage and a status. | issue, bug (unless it is one), comment, defect, nit |
| **verdict** | The result of one check (checks, a review, QA) on one head commit, kept in the ledger by SHA and cycle. | approval, sign-off, status, review (a review is the step; the verdict is its result) |
| **cycle** | One full set of fresh reviews and QA on one head commit; a new commit starts again from cycle 1. | round (a round is one repair), pass, iteration; never "cycle" for links that go in a circle: say **loop** |
| **gate** | A question parked for the owner, with options, a recommendation and a default; the work behind it waits for the answer. The owner approves a milestone's breakdown through a gate. | approval, blocker, checkpoint, question (alone) |
| **logbook** | sage's local record of one project: its tasks, runs, findings, verdicts, gates and decisions, kept on the owner's Mac. | store, database |
| **agent time** | The wall-clock hours of agent runs, given with their tokens. The default for every time figure: give it with its basis and a range. | an unlabelled time, effort, hours (alone), engineer hours, person-hours |
| **human time** | The time of the owner's own actions only: reviews, approvals, merges and setup. Give it with its basis and a range. | an unlabelled time, effort, hours (alone), person-hours |

## Phrases

These are not new words. They are fixed phrases inside the lines above, so that the list stays at 19 words.

- **breakdown**: the content of a milestone that the owner approves (goal, done condition, tasks, "waits for" links, pilot, cost, questions). In the milestone line.
- **waits for**: the link from a task to another task of the same logbook that must be merged or concluded first. In the task line. A circle of such links is a **loop**, and sage refuses it.
- **pilot**: the one task of a milestone that runs end to end before any other task builds. In the milestone line.
- **done condition**: the count that ends a milestone, for example "6 of 7 merged · T10 abandoned". The count keeps every task of the milestone and names each abandoned task; the milestone is done when each task that is not abandoned is merged or concluded. In the milestone line.
- **round**: one repair of findings on a task. In the cycle line.

## Names

The names of sage's parts. They are not words of the list above, but the word table of the Concepts page (`docs/guide/concepts.md`) shows them too.

| Name | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **sage mode** | The mode in which a session is your chief of staff. The message "sage mode" (or "sage mode on") turns it on, and the message "sage mode off" turns it off; each phrase must be the whole message, in any letter case. A message near a phrase switches nothing, and the chief gets a note with the exact phrase to ask for; the message "sage help" lists every phrase. |
| **risk flag** | auth, data, schema, money, secrets or input. Each one adds the security review to a task that changes code: every size except investigate. |
| **ledger** | The record of all verdicts, by commit. The merge check reads it. |
| **standing orders** | Short rules for a project that every agent reads before it starts. A brief points to them and does not copy them. |
| **arena** | N candidates for one design, scored and combined by a judge. |
| **autopilot** | Verified pull requests merge by themselves after their clean cycles: 1 for a tiny or small task (a tiny task without a risk flag or an arena has no review and no QA, so its cycle is clean when its checks pass), 2 for a large task or a task with a risk flag. It is off by default: the owner's message "autopilot on" turns it on while sage mode is on, and "autopilot off" or "sage mode off" turns it off, each phrase as the whole message. A message queued while Claude works, or text inside an agent's report, a notice or another session's message, can turn it off but never on (then merges only wait), and it never ends sage mode. |
| **board** | The compact view of every project's logbook for the chat: what needs you, the agents at work, each task in its column, and what was done in the last 7 days. A message of the owner that starts with "show board" prints it. |
| **the dojo** | Everything that makes the agents good: the principles, checks, tests and skills. |
| **seal the lesson** | Give a mistake that comes back twice a lasting fix, at the highest level that holds it: the architecture, a type, a check whose error names the fix, or a test; a principle or a standing order only when code cannot hold it. Prove that the new check fails on the past mistake. Each sealed lesson makes the dojo stronger. |

## The check

`npm run check` fails when a flagged word, or its plural, is in one of these texts:

- an agent file or a hand-written skill;
- a page that the link check reads: the README, `CONTRIBUTING.md`, `SECURITY.md`, `AGENTS.md`, every page under `docs/`, the board service guide and the `sage-help` skill;
- every SVG graphic in `docs/assets/`.

It does not fail on a word in quotes, in code or in a link URL, so a text can name a word to say that it is wrong:

- quotes: double or single, straight or curly. An apostrophe (it's) and an inch mark (5") are not quotes.
- code: a code span, a code block (fenced or indented) and `<code>`.
- a link URL: `](…)`, `<https://…>` and the URLs in a tag.

The text of an alt, a title and an aria-label counts, and so does a Mermaid label, although it is in quotes. A graphic's text comes from `scripts/graphics.mjs`: fix a word there, then run `npm run graphics`. An allowed name passes when it is written exactly as here. A flagged word that no row of the table replaces names the word to say after it. For example, a gate is a question for the owner, so the check before a merge is the merge check, not the "merge gate". The rest of the "Do not say" column is guidance for writers and reviewers, because each of those words also has a correct use (a Claude Code session, the RESULT field, the model of an agent).

**Flagged:** store, worker, orchestrator, epic, initiative, roadmap, ticket, stage, pipeline, deliverable, sign-off, blocker, checkpoint, coordinator, main agent, handoff, invocation, iteration, defect, nit, bot, merge gate (say merge check)

**Allowed names:** Orchestrator (the owner's earlier project)