LiteShip documentation glossary

Vocabulary for prose across this repository. Technical identifiers (Boundary, @czap/core, czapMiddleware, --czap-*, host-wired, CLI czap, …) stay exactly as shipped; this file governs surrounding language only.

The shape

signal ─▶ boundary ─▶ graph ─▶ cast ─▶ patch

• signal — a continuous input from the world (viewport, scroll, audio…)
• boundary — quantizes it into a few named states
• graph — seals boundaries, tokens, and styles into one content-addressed truth
• cast — projects (verb) that truth to CSS, GPU, ARIA, AI, TypeScript, and video
• patch — the only way to change the truth: a validated mutation

Three-layer naming

Canonical sentence: LiteShip — powered by the CZAP engine, distributed as @czap/* packages on npm.

Primitives (prose register)

Substrate & cast vocabulary (prose register)

Terms-of-art for the IR and the cast machinery. Pin the meaning; do not translate by surface form.

Banned in marketing-style prose

next-generation, leverage, robust, powerful, seamless, blazingly fast, cutting-edge, world-class, enterprise-grade, paradigm-shifting, game-changing, revolutionary, unleash, supercharge, harness the power of. Replace with concrete behavior, or cut.

Translator notes

A few terms in this corpus are polysemous; future i18n / machine-translation work should treat them as terms-of-art and pin the meaning rather than translate by surface form:

• cast — verb only, “project a definition into a target output surface” (CSS, GLSL, ARIA, etc.). Not the noun (theatrical cast) and not type-coercion (as casting). Always carries a target.
• rig — both verb (“rig a boundary”) and noun (“the rig is in between”). The system that ties continuous signals to named bearings. Not the unrelated rigging-of-results sense.
• surface — noun, “a runtime target the compiler emits to” (CSS surface, ARIA surface). Not the verb sense (something coming to attention).
• bearing — noun, “a named discrete state a boundary partitions to” (one of mobile/tablet/desktop, etc.). Not the mechanical-bearing or the comportment sense.
• trim — runtime-cost language: “kept the working deck trim” = “kept the runtime cost low.”

Maritime register (CLI surface)

User-facing CLI strings (czap doctor, pnpm shakedown, postinstall, clean, dispatch errors) draw from one consistent shipyard vocabulary. Authors of new CLI output should pull from here rather than invent register on the fly. The lint test tests/unit/cli/glossary-lint.test.ts enforces that every term used in CLI source is defined here and in czap glossary.

Time semantics (two clocks, one rule)

A timestamp field names which clock by its TYPE, never by the bare word. The two must never be confused — one bears identity, one does not.

Rule: an identity-adjacent command/result type must type a volatile stamp as WallClockTimestamp (or HLC for a causal one) — never a bare timestamp: string. Wiring a wall clock where an HLC belongs corrupts identity; the type names the contract so it can’t happen silently.

The two generated-time names follow the same rule by their TYPE, not by being renamed:

• generated_at (snake_case) — the ship-capsule’s HLC: causal, public, identity-bearing (hashed into the content address). Preserve it.
• generatedAt (camelCase) — report/artifact provenance: a volatile WallClockTimestamp. Stable field key, typed as the alias.

For same-run coherence of gauntlet artifacts, the authoritative signal is gauntletRunId (a per-run UUID stamped into every artifact), NOT a generatedAt comparison. Any Date.parse(generatedAt) vs file-mtime check is a secondary wall-clock heuristic, not causal proof.

Gauntlet & rigor engine (prose register)

The vocabulary of @czap/gauntlet (AUDIT.md, ADR-0023).

• gauntlet — the self-proving rigor engine; the gate set + the runner that qualifies them.
• gate — a (context) → Finding[] fitness function; earns blocking authority only by self-proof.
• FactGate — a gate whose decision is DATA over a declared FactPack (vs a closure), so it cannot read undeclared evidence (ADR-0019). Built by defineFactGate; the discriminant is an unforgeable WeakSet, not a string.
• producer / kernel — a FactGate’s two halves: the producer does acquisition + normalization (host-side); the kernel is the bounded, data-only decision.
• assurance level — L0–L4; the hazard model that aims a gate’s rigor. Authority decides the level, not folder location.
• finding — a gate’s emitted result (ruleId, severity, level, location, remediation).
• authority ratchet — a gate is advisory until it self-proves red/green/mutation, then blocking. Authority is earned, not granted.
• evidence digest — the out-of-IR bytes a gate’s verdict depends on, folded into the verdict-cache key. A FactGate derives it from its declared channels; a closure gate must author it.
• green is not clean — the standing discipline: a passing gauntlet means only that the gates that ran, on the surfaces they scanned, found nothing — never that the repo is correct.

Drift check

After editing docs, run the sweep: mixed boundary verbs (wire vs rig), banned words, accidental rename of @czap/* or public APIs. The glossary holds; the prose comes back to it.