Glossary

Key terms used across Apothem's documentation, code, and governance, in alphabetical order.

Adapter

A class implementing the HarnessAdapter protocol that translates the shared profile into a harness-specific config format. Adapters live one per sub-package under src/apothem/harnesses/<name>/. See Harness adapter abstraction.

Audit review sequence

The eleven-command audit sweep covering code, code-review, security, performance, architecture, UX, accessibility, docs, dependencies, supply chain, and threat model. Driven by the /fortress hardening pipeline. See Audit review sequence.

Behavior-diff golden

A committed snapshot in tests/fixtures/behavior-diff/ that the deterministic install and CLI oracles are byte-compared against, so an unintended change to an install plan, rendered cohort, or CLI output is caught as drift rather than shipping silently. The comparison canonicalizes platform-divergent bytes so the corpus stays portable across operating systems.

Cohort

A grouped set of synced artifacts of one kind — rules, commands, skills, agents, hooks, output-styles, schemas, or templates — that the engine materializes into each harness from the single shared profile. One profile carries every cohort; each adapter projects them into its harness's native surface.

Conformity gate

The mechanical fraction of the fifteen-bar pre-emission gate — the machine-checkable validators at src/apothem/conformity/gate.py. Runs before every artifact emission; the reasoned bars are evaluated in review.

Entry point

The apothem.harnesses setuptools entry-point group declared in pyproject.toml. It mirrors the harness registry exactly; a test asserts the declared entry points equal the registered adapters, so a convention-correct but unregistered adapter surfaces as a coverage regression.

Harness

An assistant platform that Apothem supports via a dedicated adapter. Supported platforms:

Antigravity
Claude Code
CodeBuddy
Codex
Cursor
Gemini CLI
GitHub Copilot
GLM (Z.ai)
Hermes
Kimi Code
Kiro
Open-Claw
OpenCode
Qwen Code
Trae
Windsurf
Zed

See Harnesses.

Harness registry

The catalog at src/apothem/lib/harness_registry.py (data in harness_registry_data.py) that lists every adapter and is authoritative at runtime — the engine resolves every adapter from it, so it loads from a plain checkout. Filesystem-convention discovery under src/apothem/harnesses/ is a conformance parity check, not the runtime resolver.

Hook

A command registered on a harness lifecycle event (PreToolUse, PostToolUse, SessionStart, Stop). The native registration surface varies per harness — a settings file, a dedicated hooks manifest, or, where a harness exposes no native hook surface, Apothem support material referenced from the instruction anchor. Hook scripts and their message contexts live under src/apothem/hooks/.

Materializer

An adapter's optional materialize_native_config(profile) -> str that renders a single-file native configuration from the shared profile, for harnesses whose config is one structured surface (e.g. a JSON or YAML settings file). Template-propagation adapters omit the materializer and instead copy or convert cohorts per the propagation manifest.

Output-style

A Markdown definition under output-styles/ that shapes the assistant's response format and voice (for example a concise-engineer or forensic-auditor style). One of the synced cohorts an adapter installs.

Plan suite

A structured collection of planning artifacts (PREAMBLE.md, MASTER-PLAN.md, PROGRESS.md, PLAN-NOTES.md, per-phase PHASE.md files) produced by /plan-generate and executed by /plan-execute, under a project-local .apothem/plans/ directory (a legacy .plans/ tree is upgraded via apothem migrate-workspace).

Pre-emission gate

The fifteen-bar sign-off block recorded before an artifact is emitted or a phase output is considered complete. The mechanical bars run as the conformity gate; the reasoned bars are evaluated in review. See Pre-emission gate.

Propagation manifest

src/apothem/lib/propagation-manifest.yaml — declares, per template-propagation adapter, which cohorts it installs and any harness-native-format conversions (for example converting commands into a harness's TOML form).

Release-readiness gates

The three convergence gates: local conformity, continuous-integration, and the audit review sequence. A release proceeds only after the relevant gates pass.

Self-contained runtime

Apothem vendors its runtime Python dependencies (such as pyyaml and jsonschema) under src/apothem/_vendor/, so the engine runs from a plain checkout. Only click and rich resolve at install time. See Self-contained runtime.

Seriousness tier

One of four governance levels (EXPLORING, PERSONAL_USE, SHARED, PUBLIC_LAUNCH) that determines which quality controls apply. See Seriousness tiers.

Shared profile

A schema-validated YAML file at ~/.config/apothem/profile.yaml or --profile PATH. Harness adapters combine it with the packaged Apothem cohorts and derive native config for each supported harness.

STANDARD-CONVENTION-PIN

The per-adapter STANDARD-CONVENTION-PIN.md recording the vendor documentation URL, commit SHA, snapshot date, and canonical filename and schema the adapter's conventions are pinned to. Re-verified on a cadence so an adapter never drifts silently from the vendor surface it targets.

Support subtree

An Apothem-owned directory a harness install uses for cohorts the harness has no native primitive for (rules, hooks, skills, or agents). It is referenced from the harness's native instruction anchor rather than forced into a vendor-reserved directory.