Glossary

Terms used across Cadence docs and the codebase.

Intended audience: Stakeholders, Business analysts, Solution architects, Developers, Testers

Learning outcomes by role

Stakeholders

Look up terms quickly when reviewing decks or contracts referencing Cadence.

Business analysts

Align vocabulary across requirements and support documentation.

Solution architects

Disambiguate integration jargon when comparing to other platforms.

Developers

Navigate to deep dives from glossary entries.

Testers

Build a shared lexicon for test case titles and defects.

Alphabetical reference for jargon used in this documentation. For behavior detail, follow the links to Concepts and Features.

A

API key (`cdk_`)

Long-lived automation secret stored hashed in PostgreSQL. Callers send it in X-API-KEY; effective access follows the key’s scopes and the owning user’s org memberships. See API keys.

C

Central point

Platform abstraction for a stable routing entry (alias) to an orchestrator configuration, with optional public visibility—see Central Points.

H

Hot, warm, and cold (pool tier)

Controls how eagerly an orchestrator instance stays in the process pool—loaded at startup, on demand, or lazily. See Hot-reload and orchestrator pool.

J

JWT and `jti`

Access tokens for interactive users are JWTs. The claim jti (JWT ID) is the Redis key used to load the live session; revoking Redis invalidates the token even if the JWT string still verifies. See JWT sessions.

O

Org (tenant)

An organization—the unit of isolation. Data and orchestrator instances are scoped by org_id. See Multi-tenancy.

Orchestrator instance

One configured agent runtime for an org: framework, mode, plugins, and pool tier—identified by instance_id. See Orchestrator instances.

P

Plugin ref

String identifying a plugin source (system: vs org-scoped) and version for loading. See Plugins and Plugin system.

R

RBAC

Role-based access control: roles carry permission strings (cadence:…) evaluated per org. See Role-based access control.

S

`sys_admin`

Platform superuser flag on the session; bypasses normal org checks where implemented. See Security and access.

T

TokenSession

Redis-backed view of the caller (interactive or API key): user id, permissions, org memberships, and related fields. See JWT sessions and Security and access.

X

`X-ORG-ID`

HTTP header selecting which organization a request targets when the path does not embed {org_id}. See Multi-tenancy.