Invented terms are paired with industry equivalents on first use across this site. This glossary is the canonical reference — and itself a terminology-management writing sample.
Maintainer controlled vocabulary: four status terms, dual-kernel stack labels, one canonical URL per document.
| Term | Industry equivalent | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| Principal | Accountable operator / remote pilot in command | The human who holds authority over governance decisions. Approves escalations, authorizes missions, and owns outcomes recorded in the evidence chain. |
| Steward | Operator / supervisor | The role Light Station supports: observes governance, relays approve/reject decisions to Vigil. Does not evaluate proposals or issue verdicts. |
| Evidence bundle | Flight data record / audit package | Post-flight hash-chained record of every governance verdict. Portable for inspector replay and verification. |
| AUTO_ALLOW | Permitted action | Deterministic verdict: action is within authorized envelope. Effect executes; verdict recorded. |
| AUTO_DENY | Blocked action / automatic RTL | Deterministic verdict: action violates a Law. Effect blocked; no human override in current state. |
| ESCALATE | Operator confirmation required | Deliberate handoff to Principal for a reserved decision — not a confidence threshold. |
| Sentinel | Edge enforcement proxy / MAVLink gateway | RustVector wire-speed MAVLink proxy. Evaluates every frame before it reaches the autopilot. |
| FlightLaw | Aviation safety kernel / operational rules engine | SwiftVector jurisdiction for autonomous aviation. Composes Laws 3, 4, 7, 8 for UAS operations. |
| Vigil | Policy enforcement daemon | SwiftVector jurisdiction for desktop AI agents. HTTP oracle evaluating tool calls before execution. |
| Light Station | Operator console / GCS observability layer | Governance observability console. Read-mostly operating picture of proposals, verdicts, and escalations. |
| AgentVector | Governance framework / control plane | Constitutional framework: Codex defines Laws, kernels enforce, jurisdictions apply to domains. |
| Codex | Policy specification / requirements document | Eleven Laws in four groups. Language-agnostic specification of what must be enforced. |
| SwiftVector | Swift enforcement runtime | Deterministic state machine kernel on Apple Silicon. Actor isolation, pure-function reducers. |
| RustVector | Rust enforcement runtime | Cross-platform kernel for wire-speed and bare-metal contexts (e.g. Sentinel MAVLink proxy). |
| Jurisdiction | Domain policy pack / operational profile | Composed Law set for a specific domain: FlightLaw (aviation), Vigil (desktop agents), ChronicleGovernance (narrative). |
| CommitVector | Spatial ML governance seam | GeoVector pattern: governed boundary between spatial ML output and position authority. |
| deny-wins | Fail-safe composition | If any Law returns DENY, the action is blocked regardless of other Law verdicts. |
| HOLD | Pending operator approval | Light Station surface label for Vigil escalate verdict. Agent suspended until Principal acts. |