Glossary

Adapted from GLOSSARY.md at the monorepo root (version 0.1.0). Per that document: “Unless explicitly stated otherwise, these definitions are normative.” Where a term has its own dedicated page in this documentation, this glossary links to it rather than restating its full field model.

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Authority

The entity responsible for initiating or approving an execution. Answers: who decided? See Concepts → Authority.

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Intent

The explicit description of the desired outcome. Answers: what should happen? See Concepts → Intent.

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Authorization

The decision permitting or denying execution. Answers: was execution allowed? See Concepts → Authorization.

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Execution

The actual realization of the authorized intent. Answers: what happened? See Concepts → Execution.

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Evidence

Immutable artifacts describing execution. Evidence enables replay, audit, and verification.

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Verification

The independent evaluation of an execution record. Answers: can the recorded execution be trusted? See Concepts → Verification.

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Execution Trust

The architectural property established when an independent verifier can demonstrate that execution faithfully reflects authorized intent using immutable evidence. Execution Trust is the primary objective of Parmana.

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ExecutionTransaction

The immutable aggregate root representing a single execution lifecycle: Authority, Intent, Authorization, Execution, and Evidence. In the implemented code, this role is filled by BusinessTransaction plus the artifacts aggregated onto its Execution Trust Record.

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Runtime

The subsystem responsible for orchestrating execution. The Runtime produces execution records. The Runtime does not establish trust. See runtime package.

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Runtime Pipeline

An ordered sequence of Runtime Components that transform an immutable ExecutionTransaction. See Runtime → Runtime Pipeline.

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Runtime Component

A deterministic execution stage participating in the Runtime Pipeline. Each component accepts an immutable transaction and returns a new immutable transaction.

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Verification Engine

The subsystem responsible for independently evaluating execution records; consumes immutable transactions and produces verification reports. The monorepo ships a real, dedicated verification package matching this description, but it isn’t currently invoked by the API — see that page for what runs instead.

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Verification Report

The immutable result produced by the Verification Engine; summarizes the outcome of verification without modifying the execution record. Implemented as Verification.

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Replay

The deterministic reconstruction of execution semantics using preserved execution records and evidence, used to validate that execution can be reproduced from recorded facts. See Concepts → Replay and Guides → Deterministic Replay for how this compares to what POST /replay currently does.

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Deterministic Execution

Execution in which equivalent recorded inputs produce equivalent observable results — required for replay and independent verification.

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Append-Only Evidence

An evidence model in which historical artifacts are never modified or deleted; new information is represented by appending additional evidence rather than altering existing records. See Architecture → Security Model.

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Cryptographic Agility

The architectural principle that cryptographic algorithms are replaceable implementation details rather than fixed domain concepts. See crypto package for the concrete SHA-256/Ed25519 defaults this currently resolves to.

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Platform Guarantee

A behavior that every conformant Parmana implementation must preserve — for example, deterministic execution, immutable records, and independent verification.

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Conformance

The property of satisfying the Parmana Specification and Platform Guarantees, demonstrated through implementation behavior rather than implementation details.

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Reference Implementation

The official implementation maintained by the Parmana project — this monorepo. It demonstrates one correct realization of the specification but is not the specification itself.

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Specification

The normative set of documents that define Parmana’s architecture, behavior, and contracts (the root-level .md files: SPECIFICATION.md, PROTOCOL.md, ARCHITECTURE.md, and this glossary, among others). Implementations conform to the specification rather than to a particular codebase.

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