Glossary
Our words, and the market’s.
We use plain words on this site. Analysts, standards and security reviews use others. This page maps one to the other.
Terms
Nine words.
The first column is our word.
| What it is | The market term | |
|---|---|---|
| Badge | What an agent may do for this job, for whom, and until when. Issued from your directory. | Agent identity with a scoped, time-limited credential |
| The door | The check every request passes before it reaches an agent or a tool. Steps outside the badge are refused here. | Policy enforcement point |
| Narrowing | At every handoff the badge gets smaller or stays the same. It never grows, including across organisations. | Constrained delegation |
| The record | Every decision, refusals included, written as it happens. Nobody can quietly edit it. | Audit trail, multi-party endorsed |
| Sent to a human | A step over a limit waits for a person. The answer is written down like any other decision. | Human-in-the-loop approval |
| Revoke | End an agent’s badges. From then on it is refused at the door, and the revocation is on the record. | Kill switch |
| Session | One governed exchange between two parties, under one badge. Each handoff starts a new, narrower one. | Delegation chain link; just-in-time access grant |
| Bring your own agent | Connect an agent you already run, from any vendor, and govern it without changing its code. | Third-party agent governance |
| Sovereign shape | Ares in your building, disconnected if needed, on one small machine at 20–25 W. | Sovereign, air-gapped deployment |
Why two sets of words
Our words describe what you see happen: a badge is checked at a door and the result goes in the record. The market terms are how the same ideas appear in standards, analyst reports and security questionnaires. When a page here uses one, it pairs it with the other once.
See the permission model for how the badge is issued, narrowed, expired and revoked.
Next step
Watch the words happen.
Run a scenario in the sandbox and see each badge, door and record in one run.