Glossary
Key terms used throughout the goatcs-harness documentation.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| tier-3 | The harness maturity level where the LLM is programmed by an explicit graph topology with deterministic routing, not merely assisted by context engineering. |
| graph.json | The single source of truth for a skill's topology: nodes, edges, metadata, and gate conditions. |
| node | A typed processing unit in the graph. Has an exec_type (inline/spawn), hat, tier, and scale_gates. |
| edge | A typed connection between nodes. Six closed-vocabulary types: required, optional, gate-open, forward-conditional, back-edge, terminal. |
| wave | A scheduling group. Nodes in the same wave with no inter-dependencies dispatch in parallel. |
| INV-1 | Input-is-data invariant: the input is never rewritten or "improved" by the harness. |
| INV-3 | Machine-routes invariant: the harness resolves ready-sets and evaluates gates; the LLM reasons but does not choose the next node. |
| native skill | A skill authored directly on the harness (graph.json + modules/*.md), as opposed to a Claude Code slash-command skill. |
| dialect | The graph specification format. The harness supports native (its own) and imported dialects (e.g., epiphany-plan markdown/JSON). |
| fidelity gate | A deterministic (no-llm) verification node that checks output quality before allowing the pipeline to advance. |
| forge | The harness's built-in skill-authoring capability. Given a brief, forge emits a complete native skill package (graph.json, modules, scripts, tests). |
| gate_condition | A Boolean expression on a forward-conditional or back-edge that the harness evaluates to decide whether the edge fires. |
| ready-set | The set of nodes whose predecessors have all completed and whose scale/branch gates are satisfied. The harness dispatches the ready-set at each step. |
| HC-23 | Hard constraint requiring parallel dispatch: independent spawn nodes in the same wave must be dispatched in a single response. |
| back-edge | An edge that re-enqueues an earlier node when a refinement signal is raised. Capped by retry_cap (default 1). |
| WAL | Write-ahead log used during atomic emit to ensure all-or-nothing artifact writes. |
| wiring-contract | A YAML declaration of expected node-to-module bindings, used by wiring-check to verify a skill is correctly wired. |
| exit-11 | The exit code used by inline HITL pauses. The harness pauses and waits for the operator to submit output. |
| PRC-1 | Pre-run check: validates the graph topology, module completeness, and session isolation before any node fires. |
| seed | A JSON file providing initial state (inputs) for a harness run. |