Glossary

Action Broker. The one checkpoint every real effect crosses - starting a provider, running a command, writing a file - deciding allow, deny, or ask a human, and recording it in that run’s actions.ndjson. Default-allow with a policy veto: it is where you impose limits, not a whitelist to satisfy. See Safety.

Crew. Your local team of Roles, matched to a Flow’s Seats. A run uses defaultCrew from project.yml unless you pass another. See Crew.

Role. One teammate inside a Crew: instructions, permissions, skills, the Profile it runs on, and the Seats it may fill. See Role.

Seat. A slot a Flow step needs someone in, such as implementer, answered by a Role whose seats list includes it. See Seat.

Profile. How strong and how expensive a Role runs: provider, model, power, timeout. Power is provider-specific. See Profile.

Approval gate. Where a run stops and waits for a person. Three things raise one: a stage under policies.requireApprovalAtStages (once per run, on the first pass), a step of kind: approval-gate, or an agent emitting HUMAN_APPROVAL: REQUIRED. The run sits at waiting_for_approval until you approve, reject, or request changes.

Context source. A file, PDF or URL handed to a run or task so its contents reach every agent’s prompt (vibe run --context-file/--context-pdf/--context-url, or a task’s context panel). Secret files are refused and secret-looking text hidden - including text pulled out of a PDF; URLs are size-capped and cleaned. PDFs are read with poppler’s pdftotext, which Vibestrate does not bundle, so a missing one is reported with the install command. A source that fails is skipped with a note rather than breaking the run.

Artifact. Any file a run makes: each step’s prompt and reply, validation output, review findings, and the verification summary when the flow has a verify step. All under that run’s folder in .vibestrate/runs/.

CLI. The vibe command-line tool - the automation path. Anything the dashboard does it can do, which makes a run scriptable from CI.

Effort. A keyword heuristic’s reading of how hard a task’s text sounds - low | medium | high - with its reasons shown so you can disagree. A hint the flow selector weighs, not a setting. Not a Profile’s power, which is the reasoning level a provider is asked for.

Flow. A saved recipe for a run: named Seats, your own step order, optional pause points, bounded repeats. See Flow.

Instructions. Your project’s house rules in .vibestrate/rules.md, pasted into every agent’s prompt on every turn. Guidance, not a guarantee - the model may follow them or not. Contrast Policy, which is enforced in code.

Mission Control. The local dashboard, opened with vibe ui on 127.0.0.1:4317. The primary surface: watch runs, approve gates, read diffs, edit crews, flows and config.

Orchestrator. What pushes a run through its stages: it moves the state machine, saves artifacts, and hands work between agents.

Permission profile. A named bundle of allowed and forbidden actions for a Role - read_only, code_write, and so on. Declared under permissions.profiles in project.yml, attached per role. (Not the runtime Profile.)

Phase. Same as stage. In the code, “stage” is the word used.

Plan. The structured output the planner agent produces, in the default flow’s first stage.

Ponytail. The minimalism posture injected into the agents that write code, so their default is the smallest change that works. On by default; vibe config set ponytail false turns it off. Only the implementer and fixer see it. See Ponytail.

Policy. A gate enforced by code, not a line in a prompt. Policies live in .vibestrate/policies/*.yml (and as approval gates via policies.requireApprovalAtStages); the Action Broker checks them and can deny an effect or flag it require_approval - accepted only on run.complete and file.patch, the two that can pause. A run refuses to start while any policy file is malformed or an id is defined twice: a rule that did not load protects nothing.

Project root. The git repository where vibe init was run, and where .vibestrate/ lives.

Provider. Whatever Vibestrate uses to reach a model: a local CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Aider, Ollama and several more), a cloud API (http-api, your own env-ref key, marked external), or a local model server (localhost-proxy, no egress). See Provider.

Replay. A look-only viewer for a saved run: the Replay tab on the run, or vibe replay <runId>.

Roadmap task. An item in .vibestrate/roadmap/roadmap.json, tied to a run with --task <taskId>. Separate from the run itself.

Run. One live pass through a flow, started from a task. Its own runId, worktree, branch, status, artifacts and events.

Skill. A markdown file loaded alongside an agent’s prompt, from .vibestrate/skills/ or .claude/skills/. See Skill.

Stage. One phase of the flow - planning, executing, and so on. Each begins in one status and ends in another.

State machine. The allowed run-status changes, enforced by assertTransition: a run cannot jump to a status the rules do not permit.

Status. A run’s position right now, from a fixed enum: created, planning, planned, … merge_ready, blocked, failed, aborted. See Run state.

Spec-up. The planning chain that runs before any code: it reads a brief, asks the gap questions, then drafts a scope, a spec, an architecture, a risks register and a roadmap of cards. Every step is a read-only run. See Spec-up.

Supervisor. One word, two things. The setting (persona in project.yml) is the judgment a run brings. The Supervisor panel in Mission Control is a conversation with your project that can, when you allow it, act. See Supervisor and Supervisor Control.

Consult. One read-only question about your project, answered from your real files, config and runs plus Vibestrate’s own docs. Starts nothing, changes nothing. The orb on any dashboard screen, or vibe consult "...". See Consult.

Task. A description of what you want done. It kicks off a run. See Task.

Assist. A single read-only ask with a structured answer: one question to a provider, back comes validated JSON. No worktree, no fix loop, no run lifecycle. Audited like any other effect, with evidence under .vibestrate/runs/assist/.

Enhance. An Assist that breaks a task into an ordered Checklist: “Add a health endpoint” becomes 1. define the route, 2. return json, 3. add a test. It proposes only; you accept. vibe tasks enhance <id> (--apply appends), or the Enhance button on a task. Not macro Proposals, which create separate cards, and not the Conductor’s ENHANCE verdict, which refines a supervised task’s pending steps mid-run.

Board columns. The planning board sorts cards into Planned · In-progress · Needs testing · Completed · Archived, from a card’s status plus its needs-testing and archived overlays, shifting as run status changes. Archived is a flag you set, independent of run status.

Needs testing. A non-blocking heads-up from a reviewer or verifier (HUMAN_REVIEW: ADVISORY) when a run finished fine but a person should eyeball what a model cannot perceive - layout, animation, 3D, feel. The run keeps its verdict, so unlike an approval gate nothing is stuck. A banner on the task and a badge on the board card: Looks good sends the card to Done, Needs work reopens it.

Pick-up execution. Running a card’s Checklist one item at a time in one run and one worktree: the flow’s checklistSegment repeats per item (micro-plan, then implement), committing each and carrying a compact summary forward, with one holistic plan before and one review after. Continuous runs items back-to-back; step-by-step pauses between them. vibe tasks pickup <id> (--step to pause), or Run checklist.

Checklist. An ordered list of items inside a task: the concrete breakdown of the work, kept on the card. Each item has a status (pending/in_progress/done/blocked). vibe tasks checklist …, or the task detail page. (A Flow Step is a different thing: a workflow phase.)

Run mode. How a task runs: plain (one holistic pass) or supervised (the Conductor sequences the steps). A field on the task, not a different kind of task.

Supervised task. A task in supervised run mode. Its checklist items become steps, each with an objective, an acceptance check and optional file hints, and each gets its own executor turn and review. Bounded by supervised.maxSteps (20 by default) and supervised.maxSpendUsd. See Supervised tasks.

Conductor. What sequences a supervised task’s steps. Between them it runs a cheap read-only supervisor turn returning PROCEED, ENHANCE or ESCALATE, and maintains an invariants ledger, an append-only list of cross-cutting decisions re-injected into every later step. ENHANCE triggers a plan-only pass that may refine, reorder or remove pending steps; adding a step, or removing one you authored, escalates to you.

Terminal status. merge_ready, blocked, failed or aborted. A run that reaches one cannot transition out.

Telemetry export. Opt-in and one-off: vibe telemetry export <runId> --endpoint <url> turns a finished run’s metrics into an OpenTelemetry trace - a root run span plus a child span per role turn - and POSTs it to your own collector. Off by default; nothing leaves until you run it. vibe telemetry trace prints the same JSON without sending.

Validation. The stage that runs commands.validate from project.yml - typecheck, tests, build, lint. The factual check between executor and reviewer.

Integration. Joining the branches of several merge_ready runs. The merges are previewed first (real git merge dry runs that surface conflicts), then the clean ones integrate sequentially into a dedicated integration branch - never main, never pushed, stopping at the first conflict for you to resolve. The Source page’s Merge tab, the Integration panel on the Runs page, or vibe integrate preview/apply.

Workspace. The user-level registry of projects you have opened (~/.vibestrate/workspace.json). Each vibe ui adds its project and the port it bound, and the sidebar’s project switcher hops between them. Projects stay independent - each its own vibe ui and scheduler on its own port, with no cross-project control plane. All projects (a dashboard page, or vibe workspace overview) rolls up runs, outcomes and spend per project plus combined totals. Open loads a project in a new tab, starting a dormant one on a free port; Close asks that project’s server to stop its scheduler and exit, warning first when work is in flight.

Worktree. A separate git working directory bound to its own branch. One per run, under git.worktreeDir. See Worktree.

Workflow. The static, ordered description of the stages a run progresses through. See Workflow.

Container isolation. Running each provider turn inside a throwaway Docker container, so the blast radius is the container. Off by default (execution.backend: local-worktree); vibe config set execution.backend docker turns it on. See Container isolation.

Annotation. A short note pinned to a file so agents read it before they start - “don’t refactor this”. It never touches your source; annotations live in .vibestrate/annotations.json. See Annotations.

Project parameters. Typed answers a Flow needs before it can run, filled once and reused, saved in .vibestrate/project-params.json. A secret: true param stores only the name of an environment variable, never the value. See Project parameters.

VIBESTRATE.md. A committed file at your project root telling the orchestrator what this project is and how you like it run, read before every task. Advisory like Instructions: it shapes planning but never overrides a Policy. See VIBESTRATE.md.