# Glossary ## Agent An AI coding collaborator operating inside the repository. ## Harness The repo-level operating system that tells humans and agents how to turn intent into safe product changes. ## Product Contract The current expected behavior of the product. Product docs plus executable tests become the living contract once implementation exists. ## Story Packet A story-sized work file or folder that describes the product contract, affected docs, design notes, and validation expectations for a feature. ## Feature Intake The classification step that turns a prompt into tiny, normal, or high-risk work before implementation begins. ## Component Taxonomy A map from Harness files and capabilities to the responsibilities they serve, used to evaluate coverage, attribute failures, and identify missing harness capabilities. ## Maturity Level A verifiable stage in Harness capability, from H0 bare environment through H5 self-improving harness. Each level has required files, criteria, and benchmark indicators. ## Trace Quality Tier The expected depth of a task trace: minimal for tiny work, standard for normal work, and detailed for high-risk work. ## Verification Gate An advisory Harness check that runs or inspects mechanical proof before a task is closed. In Phase 4, `story verify ` executes a story's `verify_command`, `story verify-all` runs all configured story proof commands, and `trace --story ` warns when that story's verification has not passed. ## Tool Registry The compiled and registered tool manifest exposed by `scripts/bin/harness-cli query tools`. It lets agents discover available commands, arguments, responsibilities, and custom project tools. ## Intervention A durable record of human, reviewer, CI, or agent feedback that corrected, overrode, escalated, or approved work. Interventions are stored separately from traces and feed improvement proposals. ## Context Score The advisory result from `scripts/bin/harness-cli score-context `. It compares a trace's recorded `files_read` against compiled context rules and retrieval triggers. ## Entropy Score The drift score printed by `scripts/bin/harness-cli audit`. Lower is better. It counts stale or incomplete durable records such as orphaned stories, unverified proof commands, missing backlog outcomes, and broken registered tools. ## Improvement Proposal A structured recommendation generated by `scripts/bin/harness-cli propose` from repeated friction, intervention patterns, and audit findings. Proposals are advisory unless committed to the backlog with `--commit`. ## Context Phase A phase of an agent task that changes what context should be read, such as intake, planning, implementation, validation, or trace recording. ## Retrieval Trigger A condition that tells an agent to fetch additional context, such as touching a database schema, changing a public contract, or discovering missing validation. ## Harness Delta A documentation, template, validation, backlog, or decision update that makes future agent work safer or easier. ## Backlog Outcome Loop The feedback workflow for Harness improvements: record predicted impact when a backlog item is created, then record actual measured outcome when the item is closed so future agents can compare expectation with result. ## Durable Layer The SQLite database and CLI (`scripts/bin/harness-cli`) that stores operational records (intakes, stories, decisions, backlog items, traces) as structured, queryable data. Policy docs describe how to work; the durable layer stores what happened. ## Product Delta A product-facing change such as code, tests, API shape, data model, or product documentation. ## Trace A structured record of what an agent did during a task: actions taken, files read, files changed, decisions made, errors encountered, outcome, and any harness friction discovered. ## Tool Registry The compiled and user-registered tool manifest exposed by `scripts/bin/harness-cli query tools` and documented in `docs/TOOL_REGISTRY.md`. ## Intervention A durable record of a human, reviewer, CI, or agent correction, override, escalation, or approval that is separate from the normal task trace. ## Context Score The advisory result from `scripts/bin/harness-cli score-context `, which compares a trace's recorded reads against compiled context rules. ## Entropy Score The drift score from `scripts/bin/harness-cli audit`. Lower scores mean fewer orphaned, stale, unverified, outcome-missing, or broken-tool records. ## Improvement Proposal A structured proposal generated by `scripts/bin/harness-cli propose` from repeated friction, interventions, and audit drift. Proposals can be committed as backlog items with `--commit`.