Glossary

Terms this repository uses in a specific sense, not the generic one a reader might assume. Each entry names the canonical term, defines it as this repo actually uses it with a link to the page that uses it that way, and lists the synonyms that get used loosely elsewhere but should not be reached for here.

Terms

beat

An ordered moment in a workflow where a skill or agent earns its place, named identically whether it is only documented or actually enforced. The prompt catalog uses it for a recipe's ordered list of skill dispatches (a beats: frontmatter field, each with a skill, a why, and an optional prompt) — purely documentary, nothing runs it. takt uses the identical word for the same concept once it is compiled into .claude/takt.local.md and enforced as a PreToolUse denial. arbeitsplan is the compiler that turns a stated problem into the beat declaration takt then enforces. A beat is therefore not tied to one plugin's internal pipeline — it is the cross-plugin ordering unit, whether that ordering is only written down or actually gated.

Not: step, stage, phase (see below for why each of those names something narrower).

stage

A structural unit of a codebase's own graph, not a moment in a workflow. andon walks a repository's value stream stage-by-stage — each stage is a node such as ingest, normalize, enrich, score, publish — and proves the wire between consecutive stages before advancing. befund-stage-map derives the same kind of object independently: it clusters files into stages by shallowest package boundary (never by manifest directory) and writes the stage graph other befund skills depend on. In both cases a "stage" is a piece of the codebase, not a piece of a process — the opposite of what beat names. code-modernization's "eight-stage pipeline" (cited in the catalog) is the one place "stage" is used for a pipeline step instead, borrowed from that plugin's own vocabulary rather than werkstoff's; do not read it back into andon's sense.

Not: step as a synonym for this structural sense (step is generic prose, not a term of art here); phase (a phase subdivides one orchestrator's own pipeline, not a codebase graph).

wire

The handoff between two consecutive stages in andon's value stream — what andon proves or refutes with one of seven evidence-grounded strategies before allowing the cursor to advance past it. See plugins/andon: "proving each wire before advancing," and andon-verify, which "routes a wire to one of seven evidence-grounded strategies."

Not: handoff, connection, edge — used informally in prose describing the concept, but "wire" is the word the plugin's own commands and ledger schema use.

phase

A named subdivision inside one orchestrator's own fixed pipeline, scoped to that orchestrator rather than shared across plugins the way a beat is. befund-autopilot names its own CHECK, PLAN, and FIX+VALIDATE phases (see plugins/befund); andon-loop internally runs "Phases 0-6" (detect topology, init/resume the ledger, scan, dispatch, enforce, advance, detect convergence — plugins/andon). Nothing outside that one orchestrator schedules against a phase the way takt schedules against a beat; a phase is private to its pipeline.

Not: step (used loosely for the same idea in prose, e.g. "first step of befund-autopilot's CHECK phase" — informal, not a distinct term); beat (crosses plugin boundaries and can be takt-enforced; a phase cannot).

step

Not a defined term in this repository. It appears throughout the docs as plain English for "a moment in a sequence" — sometimes meaning a beat ("wedged in as a step inside another workflow," orchestration README), sometimes a stage transition, sometimes a sub-part of a phase. Treat any occurrence as informal narration, and use the precise term (beat, stage, or phase) when writing new docs instead of reaching for "step."

leaf and orchestrator

The distinction the whole orchestration catalog is built on. An orchestrator is a fixed sequence whose middle steps read artifacts an earlier step wrote — it cannot be dropped into another workflow, because a step invoked without its predecessor's artifact either refuses or fabricates (andon-loop, befund-autopilot, zirkel-solve, the /consistency-* command chain, arbeitsplan-compile → arbeitsplan-run, and eight more are named by that page). A leaf is dispatchable at any moment from a scoped prompt, carries no pipeline state, and returns a result rather than advancing a ledger — everything else in werkstoff, including every named agent. The prompt catalog states the resulting convention directly: "Leaves only" — recipe beats name leaves and dispatchable agents, never orchestrators, because an orchestrator owns a whole task and must never be wedged in as a step inside another.

Not: sub-skill, helper, component for leaf; pipeline, workflow alone for orchestrator (both are used, but "orchestrator" specifically marks the cannot-be-dropped-in-partway property, which those looser words don't carry).

report viewer

A self-contained .html file under plugins/*/assets/*-viewer.html that renders one plugin's findings as a static, dependency-free page: no build step, no external network fetch, colour never the sole channel, and a verdict stated in words rather than left for the reader to infer from a number. Thirteen plugins ship one (15 files — matrize and arbeitsplan ship two each), and every one is paired with a scripts/build_<name>_html.py generator, a committed demo fixture, and a committed screenshot, per report-viewer-standard.md and enforced by nacharbeit_lint.py's A-VIEWER-REQUIRED rule (see the root CLAUDE.md).

Not: HTML report (says nothing about self-containment or the required generator/ fixture/screenshot triad); dashboard (implies live data or multiple linked views, which none of these are — each is one static page from one run); self-contained HTML (accurate but generic — "report viewer" is the name the standard, the lint rule, and every plugin's own file path actually use).

SKILL.md

The one required file inside a skill directory: YAML frontmatter plus a markdown body, the only file Claude Code's discovery mechanism actually reads to learn a skill exists and what triggers it. See craft-standards.md's file-tree listing: "SKILL.md — required: YAML frontmatter + markdown body." Anything else the skill needs — worked examples, schemas, longer reference material — lives in references/, loaded progressively rather than inlined.

Not: skill definition, skill file — both are used informally elsewhere to mean the same file, but neither says which file, and this repo has a documented failure mode specifically about that one file: frontmatter that fails to parse still loads, silently, with no description and no tools, so a SKILL.md with broken YAML never triggers and nothing reports an error (test/plugins/lint-frontmatter.py exists for exactly this). Naming the file precisely matters here more than usual.

design token

A named design value (colour, radius, spacing, type scale) defined once in tools/design-tokens/tokens.css and vendored byte-identically into every plugin's assets/tokens.css by .rrt.toml's artifact_targets — never hand-edited at the vendored copy, only at the source, then regenerated with rrt artifacts --regenerate. The rationale for which values are tokens (one aerogel chemistry per categorical slot, contrast measured against the dark background) is documented in the token file's own header; the docs-facing account of the token set lives at Design tokens.

Not: theme variable, CSS variable, style constant — accurate as CSS mechanics but silent on the single-source-of-truth-plus-vendoring discipline that is the actual point of calling it a token here.

design root

The configurable directory matrize-collect establishes before anything else, defaulting to .design/ (overridable via .claude/matrize.local.md's root: key), holding three fixed subdirectories — references/ (read-only after collection), system/ (DECODE.md, LEXIKON.md, BRIEF.md, tokens.json, assets/), and out/ (emitted targets). See matrize-collect's "Step 1 — establish the design root." The plugin's own hooks.json write-scope guard denies edits to <root>/references/** while allowing <root>/system/** and <root>/out/**, so the design root's own subdirectories carry different permissions, not just different contents.

Not: design directory, output folder — both undercount the structure: a design root is specifically the three-subdirectory layout matrize's guard enforces, not an arbitrary place to put design files.

marker

A file takt checks for as evidence a beat completed; takt itself never writes one — whatever performs the beat creates it (mkdir -p .takt && touch .takt/council-done, for example). A marker written as .takt/<name> is repo-level and is never namespaced by an arbeitsplan runId; a bare name is per-run and always is namespaced under .takt/<runId>/ — one beat declaration can carry both kinds (see the root CLAUDE.md).

Not: flag, lock file, sentinel — generic terms for the same filesystem pattern that don't carry the repo-level-vs-per-run distinction a marker's own naming convention encodes.

escape hatch

The explicitly named, environment-variable-gated way to bypass a fail-closed PreToolUse guard when its rule genuinely does not apply — never a silent default, always named in the denial message itself. Examples: takt's TAKT_DISABLE_GUARD=1 or removing the declaration file (plugins/takt), cupertino's CUPERTINO_DISABLE_GUARD=1 (plugins/cupertino). The root CLAUDE.md states the requirement directly: a hook must "fail closed with a named escape hatch." A guard with no escape hatch that still fails closed is a bug (it denies forever with no way out); a guard whose escape hatch is undocumented is unsafe (nobody knows the bypass exists to audit its use).

Not: bypass, override, kill switch — all describe the mechanism but drop the "named in the denial message" requirement that makes it an escape hatch rather than an undocumented backdoor.

shrink-only baseline

A recorded count of pre-existing findings (lint violations, missing releases, whatever the check counts) that a new convention is not required to fix retroactively, on the condition that the recorded number may only go down, never up. The root CLAUDE.md states it for the Python ruff.toml conventions ("The baseline may only shrink. … Adding a path there, or raising a number, means new code was written against the old convention — fix the code instead") and the same discipline is named again for test/plugins/tag-releases-baseline.txt. The point of the pattern is that a baseline which can grow is not a baseline at all — it is silent permission to keep doing the old thing as long as you also add your name to a list.

Not: grandfathered, legacy exception, allowlist — all imply a permanent carve-out; shrink-only specifically forbids that carve-out from ever getting bigger.

Plugin names

Every German-named plugin is named for a manufacturing or shop-floor concept its README states explicitly; the gloss below is quoted or closely paraphrased from that plugin's own README, not invented here.

That sentence is the test, and it is why zirkel, passung, befund and zeugnis carry the names they do rather than the ones they started with. A German spelling is not the point — a Kompass is a navigation instrument and would have failed this test as surely as compass did. andon was deliberately left alone: it is Japanese rather than German, but it already passes, because the rule is about the concept and not the language. Two plugins remain outside the scheme — cupertino names a place, and cli-scaffold is plain English.

werkstoff

German for "material". The design rationale in tools/design-tokens/tokens.css states the fit directly: the repo's whole visual identity is one material, silica aerogel, chosen because the name itself means "material" and the brand commits to being one substance rather than a palette of unrelated colours.

andon

Not a German word; borrowed from the Toyota Production System. "andon borrows the Toyota andon cord — stop the line the moment a defect is found rather than letting it flow downstream" (plugins/andon/README.md). The plugin halts a hardening loop at the first stage whose wire cannot be proven, exactly as an andon cord stops a physical assembly line.

arbeitsplan

German for "work plan" / routing sheet. "An Arbeitsplan is the routing sheet that turns a part drawing into a concrete sequence of operations — which machine, which tooling, how long. That is this plugin's job: problem drawing in, operation sequence out." (plugins/arbeitsplan/README.md). It compiles a stated problem into an executable, budgeted workflow the same way a shop routing sheet turns a drawing into an operation sequence.

befund

German for the written finding of an inspection — what was measured, where, and what it showed. "A Befund is the written finding of an inspection ... It records a condition; it does not pass or reject the part." (plugins/befund/README.md). It reports on a live codebase with file:line evidence and touches source only behind a recorded authorization; the gauge that actually rejects work is lehre. Renamed from self-assess, whose published tags remain under the old name.

lehre

German for both a go/no-go gauge and doctrine. "A Lehre is a go/no-go gauge: a fixture a part either passes through or is rejected by. It also means doctrine. This plugin is both halves." (plugins/lehre/README.md). It researches a code doctrine and then denies the write that would violate it — gauge and doctrine in one plugin, as the German word already is.

matrize

German for a stamping die or type-founding matrix. "A Matrize is the die: in stamping, the form that gives material its shape; in typefounding, the matrix from which every piece of type is cast. One master, many castings — which is exactly what this plugin is for." (plugins/matrize/README.md). It derives one master design system from reference exemplars and strikes every output target (tokens, stylesheet, Tailwind config, sketchbook) from that single master.

nacharbeit

German for rework — specifically, reworking a manufactured part that failed inspection. "Nacharbeit is the manufacturing word for exactly that: rework of a part that did not pass, back to the drawing." (plugins/nacharbeit/README.md). It reviews another plugin against the official Anthropic standard and reworks what fails, the same way a manufacturing rework pass returns a failed part to spec before it ships.

passung

German for the fit — the ISO tolerance class, H7/g6 and its siblings, that decides whether two mating parts go together. "Two parts can each be within spec and still not mate, because a fit is a property of the pair, not of either one alone." (plugins/passung/README.md). That is the failure it exists for: several variants of one convention, each defensible alone, that do not sit together. Renamed from codebase-consistency, whose published tags remain under the old name.

spur

German for a trace or track. "on the shop floor the Bearbeitungsspuren are the marks each operation leaves on a workpiece — which tool cut it, in which order — that an inspector reads to say how the part was made" (plugins/spur/README.md). It runs a pipeline once under a tracer and records, per step, the functions called and every file read and written with its sha256, then checks that each step read exactly the bytes the step before it wrote.

takt

German for the beat — in music the measure that paces a piece, on a line the Taktzeit that paces production. "the interval every station is built around, so a station cannot run ahead of the one feeding it" (plugins/takt/README.md). "Refuses an edit or dispatch that runs ahead of a step the repository said must come first." (plugins/takt/README.md). It ships no skills or agents of its own — only the PreToolUse hook and declaration format that turns another plugin's stated ordering into a runtime denial.

zeugnis

German for the mill certificate — the EN 10204 Werkszeugnis or Abnahmeprüfzeugnis in which a supplier declares what a material actually is. "Its grades are the point: 2.1 is the supplier's own word, 3.1 is their own inspector, and 3.2 requires an independent one. A claim is worth what the party behind it is worth." (plugins/zeugnis/README.md). It audits AI-authored code for claims that are confidently false, and no finding counts until a pass that did not produce it re-checks it. Renamed from confab, whose published tags remain under the old name.

zirkel

German for a pair of dividers — the tool used in Anreissen, scribing the layout onto a workpiece before a single cut. "It does not remove material; it decides where the material will be removed." (plugins/zirkel/README.md). Clarify, explore and decompose are the layout; execution follows a line drawn deliberately rather than found by cutting. Renamed from compass, whose published tags remain under the old name.