Glossary
Key terms used throughout AgentBoot documentation.
ADR (Architecture Decision Record) — A formal exception governance mechanism. When a developer intentionally deviates from a persona's recommendation, an ADR documents the rationale, gets reviewer approval, and becomes a permanent record the persona learns to respect.
Agent — A custom AI assistant defined with rich configuration (model, permissions, tools, hooks, memory). In AgentBoot, personas are compiled into agents for Claude Code output.
Agent-Agnostic — Content that works across multiple AI agent platforms without modification. Traits, personas (SKILL.md), and gotchas are agent-agnostic. Hooks, managed settings, and agent frontmatter are platform-specific.
agentskills.io — An open standard for AI agent skill definitions using SKILL.md format (Markdown with YAML frontmatter). Supported by 26+ agent platforms. AgentBoot uses agentskills.io as its cross-platform persona format.
Always-On Instructions — Universal guardrails distributed to every repo regardless of persona configuration. These load at session start and remain active throughout, enforcing org-wide rules like security baselines and compliance requirements.
Autonomy Progression — A three-phase model for persona independence: Advisory (persona produces findings, human decides), Auto-approve (low-risk fixes applied automatically), and Autonomous (persona operates independently, human reviews post-hoc).
Build Pipeline — The three-stage process that produces deployable output: validate (pre-build checks), compile (resolve traits, produce output), sync (distribute to repos).
CC-First Delivery — The principle that Claude Code is the primary delivery target. Content is agent-agnostic and portable, but delivery leverages Claude Code's full feature surface (plugins, hooks, managed settings, MCP).
Compilation Target — One of the output formats produced by agentboot build. The cross-platform target produces standalone SKILL.md files with traits inlined. The CC-native target produces the full .claude/ directory structure with imports, frontmatter, hooks, and MCP configuration.
Convention Over Configuration — The principle that AgentBoot ships with sensible defaults for everything. Organizations configure only what is different about their situation, not everything from scratch.
Cowork — Anthropic's desktop application for non-technical users. Cowork plugins use the same format as Claude Code plugins but appear in a GUI with form-based input rather than slash commands.
Domain Layer — A complete package of traits, personas, gotchas, and instructions for a specific compliance regime or technology stack (e.g., healthcare-compliance, fintech-compliance). Domain layers are the highest-value marketplace contribution.
Frontmatter — A YAML metadata block at the top of a Markdown file, delimited by ---. Used in SKILL.md files for persona metadata (name, version, traits, scope) and in gotchas for path-scoping configuration.
GELF (Graylog Extended Log Format) — A structured log format used alongside NDJSON for persona telemetry output. Provides standardized fields for log aggregation systems.
Gotcha (Gotchas Rule) — A path-scoped instruction encoding hard-won operational knowledge. Activated only when a developer works on files matching the glob pattern, invisible otherwise. Technology-specific and highly shareable.
HARD Guardrail — A non-overridable compliance rule deployed via MDM or marked required: true in the org config. Cannot be elevated, overridden, or disabled at any scope level. Used for rules where violation is a compliance incident.
Hub-and-Spoke Distribution — The distribution model where one central repository (the hub) contains the source of truth and target repositories (spokes) receive compiled artifacts via the sync pipeline. One-way flow: hub publishes, spokes receive.
JSONC — JSON with Comments. The format used by agentboot.config.json, allowing inline comments for documentation within configuration files.
Managed Settings — Claude Code configuration files deployed to OS-level paths via MDM. Cannot be overridden by any user or project setting. Used for HARD guardrails and forced plugin installation.
Marketplace — The three-layer ecosystem for sharing governance content: Core (maintained by AgentBoot), Verified (community-contributed and reviewed), and Community (unreviewed).
MCP (Model Context Protocol) — A protocol for AI agents to interact with external tools and data sources. MCP servers expose tools and resources that agents can consume. AgentBoot uses MCP for cross-platform persona serving and knowledge base access.
MDM (Mobile Device Management) — Enterprise device management tooling (e.g., Jamf, Intune) used to deploy managed settings files to developer machines. The enforcement channel for HARD guardrails.
NDJSON (Newline-Delimited JSON) — A format where each line is a valid JSON object, used for structured telemetry output. Human-queryable with tools like jq.
Persona — A complete, deployable AI agent. A composition of traits plus a specialized system prompt that defines the agent's identity, operating context, and mandate. Personas compose traits; they do not inherit from each other.
persona.config.json — Build metadata for a persona. Specifies which traits to compose, the target model, permission mode, tool restrictions, MCP servers, hooks, and autonomy level.
Persona Arbitrator — A dedicated persona that resolves conflicts when multiple reviewer personas produce contradictory findings on the same code. Only invoked when conflicting findings are detected.
Plugin — A Claude Code distribution unit that bundles agents, skills, hooks, rules, MCP configuration, and settings into a single installable package. The primary delivery method for Claude Code users.
Prompts as Code — The principle that AI agent behavior is treated as infrastructure: defined in files, stored in version control, reviewed in pull requests, tested, linted, and measured. Analogous to Infrastructure as Code.
Scope Hierarchy — The four-level organizational model: Org, Group, Team, Repo. More specific scopes layer on top of general ones. Optional behaviors follow "most specific wins." Mandatory behaviors follow "most general wins."
Self-Improvement Reflections — An optional mechanism where personas write brief reflections after completing their task. Reflections accumulate into a dataset revealing patterns for persona improvement.
SKILL.md — The agentskills.io format for persona definitions. A Markdown file with YAML frontmatter (name, description, traits, scope, output format) followed by the system prompt in prose.
SME Discoverability Fragment — A lightweight always-on section (~100 tokens) auto-generated by the build system that lists all available personas and how to invoke them.
SOFT Guardrail — An important default that can be temporarily elevated. Elevation is time-bounded (default 30 minutes), creates an audit log entry, and automatically re-engages on expiry.
Structured Telemetry — Persona invocation metrics emitted as structured JSON. Fields include persona ID, model, scope, token counts, cost, findings, duration, and timestamp. Contains no developer identity or prompt text by default.
Team Champion — A designated engineer on each team (typically tech lead or senior IC) who manages sync, reviews sync PRs, files quality feedback, onboards teammates, and proposes governance improvements.
Trait — A reusable behavioral building block for an AI persona. Captures a single aspect of how an agent should think or communicate. Composed at build time, never at runtime.
Trait Weight — A calibration system for traits supporting variable intensity. Named weights (HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW) map to numeric values. The weight adjusts the threshold for action, not the type of action.
Two-Channel MDM Distribution — Enterprise distribution model separating non-negotiable enforcement (Channel 1: MDM-deployed managed settings for HARD guardrails) from team-customizable configuration (Channel 2: Git-based hub-and-spoke for everything else).