Glossary — ActQL Docs

The main technical terms, and the role names used to explain them, one line each. The specification holds the precise definitions; where the two differ, the specification is right.

Term	Meaning
Author	The person or agent who writes a Program.
Capability	What a Connector can offer on behalf of its system: the reads and writes it supports, and what the system can compute itself. The basis for pushdown. Not a permission.
Carrier	A kind of typed collection that operations work on: Relation, Graph, Vectors or Events. See Beyond tables.
Checkpoint	A durable stop where protected work waits for a decision, with what is being decided and how the Run continues both fixed. Can also occur during preparation, before a Run starts.
CID	An identifier computed from normalised content. Distinguishes a Program's meaning, a Plan, an observation and a Preview from one another.
Connector	The component that connects ActQL to one external system and declares its sources, capabilities and Effects.
Core	The part of ActQL that owns meaning: it checks, plans and computes, and runs the Run state machine.
Decider	Whoever answers a delegated policy decision: a person, an automatic rule, an approval application, or a combination.
Effect	A declared operation that changes the state of an external system — update, insert, delete, a typed command, a store. Applying it requires the Host's permission.
Effect outcome	What became of one operation sent for an Effect: `applied`, `accepted`, `failed` or `unknown`. Items never sent are `unattempted`; an item undone after a failure is `rolled_back`. An Effect with several items records one outcome per item and can end partly applied.
Guard	A limit the author adds to a Program on top of those set by the systems and the Host.
Host	The part that runs ActQL in your environment and holds policy, credentials and the Store. Embedded in an application, behind the CLI, on a server; ActQL Cloud is a managed Host.
INFER	The stage that gives each row's model-task inputs to a model and returns a typed answer per row.
Invocation	The semantic input to one unit of computation: its bound values, the definitions it relies on and the observations it has captured. A Program with several stages has one Invocation per stage.
Limit	A ceiling on a quantity — rows, bytes, calls, Effects — fixed before the work it applies to starts. Exceeding it fails the work with an error.
Model task	A versioned definition of what to ask a model: the instructions, the input types and the output types. A Program refers to it by name in `INFER`.
Operator	Whoever runs a Host and sets up its connections, credentials and policy.
Plan	The execution contract the Core builds from a checked Program: operations, types, the boundaries of external work and the limits. Where and how each part physically runs is chosen within that meaning.
Policy	Host configuration that answers, per user, connection, resource and operation, whether a read, model call or Effect is allowed, denied or delegated.
Preview	The targets and changes an Effect would apply, fixed from recorded results before anything is written. Whether the current values are shown too depends on the Connector.
Program	One piece of work written in ActQL: reads, computation, model calls, Results and Effects.
Pushdown	Handing part of the work to the external system that holds the data, when results, failure behaviour, permissions and the scope of observed data all stay the same.
Reconciliation	Resolving an unknown outcome — of a Run or of an Effect — from the evidence of the original operation. May remain unresolved; never resends without evidence.
Result	A named output a Program publishes. It is kept and can be read by the caller, or by later work, with the required permission.
Run	One execution of a Program and its durable record: what was read, which answers were received, what was sent and what was decided.
Source	Where a Program reads from: a Connector's SourceView, or typed data handed to the Program locally.
SourceView	A Connector's versioned contract for one resource: its types, how it is read, and its constraints.
Stage	A finite unit of work within a Program. A later stage can use the Results and receipts of earlier ones.
Store	Where the Host keeps what execution and recovery need: Run state, observations, Results, Checkpoints and the Effect ledger.