Shared Vocabulary
Canonical terminology used across all AGF documents.
AGF uses precise terminology throughout. When a term is used in a concept document, profile, or white paper, it carries the meaning defined here.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Safe | The system does not cause unintended harm |
| Secure | The system resists adversarial attack |
| Durable | The system survives failures, maintains state, and preserves governance guarantees over time |
| Auditable | The system produces evidence trails sufficient for compliance and forensic review |
| Observable | The system emits structured events that enable monitoring, detection, and response |
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Ring | A logical governance layer in the Rings Model (0=Execution, 1=Verification, 2=Governance, 3=Learning) |
| Fabric | Cross-cutting infrastructure: events, identity, provenance, structured output, error handling |
| Substrate | The agent operating environment: context, instructions, tools, workspace, memory |
| Primitive | A named pattern for governed agentic systems (#1–#19) |
| Gate | An explicit decision point where execution pauses for authorization |
| Adaptive gate | A gate that relaxes as the system proves reliability through Trust Ladders |
| Mandatory gate | A gate that never relaxes (irreversible actions, regulatory requirements) |
| Signal | Meaning |
|---|
| PASS | Output accepted, move to next ring |
| REVISE(quality) | Ring 1 says "not good enough, try again" |
| REVISE(context) | Ring 2 says "the world changed, re-execute" |
| HALT | Something is fundamentally wrong, stop execution |
| GATE | Pause for human authorization |
| DELEGATE | Hand off to another agent with depth tracking |
| ERROR | Something broke; retry, degrade, or halt |
Used throughout the framework to mark certainty:
| Level | Meaning |
|---|
| Established pattern | Proven across multiple domains. Strong evidence. |
| Informed proposal | Based on our synthesis, not yet battle-tested at scale in agentic systems. |
| Open question | We don't have great answers yet and say so. |
| Mode | Description |
|---|
| Wrapper | Rings literally wrap execution. Sequential. |
| Middleware/Interrupt | Rings fire at decision points (tool calls, data access). |
| Graph-Embedded | Rings run concurrently with execution. |
For the complete vocabulary, see the canonical source.