Glossary

This glossary gives the user-facing meaning of common AIP terms. Normative field definitions remain in the AIP 1.0 Specification.

Term	Meaning
Action	One requested unit of work with a stable id and durable lifecycle
Action result	Terminal protocol outcome of an action
Actor	Transport-authenticated principal performing the current protocol operation
Admission	Atomic validation that a published capability has an executable, compatible handler
AIP facade tool	MCP-visible tool that exposes native AIP lifecycle or enterprise behavior
Approval	Verified authorization to continue one frozen governed operation
Approval authority	Server-owned source that decides which principal may approve under a rule
Callback	Asynchronous result delivery to an allowlisted target through a durable outbox
Capability	Discoverable operation that a participant can invoke
Capability contract	Side-effect, idempotency, execution, data, credential, approval, SLA, transaction, and compensation declaration
Compatibility profile	Versioned mapping between another protocol and native AIP semantics
Compensation	New governed action intended to offset a committed side effect
Connector	Product integration that maps external APIs and events to AIP
Correlation id	Opaque identifier grouping related messages or workflow activity
Credential handle	Opaque reference resolved to secret material only at the final connector boundary
Cursor	Opaque position used to continue an authorized event or list query
Dead letter	Work parked after its retry or recovery policy cannot continue automatically
Delegate	Participant expected to execute a child action
Delegation	Parent-child action relationship across an authenticated AIP participant boundary
Durable	Persisted under the configured storage contract rather than owned by one connection or process future
Envelope	Native AIP message wrapper containing version, type, identity, correlation, security, and one body
Escalation	Request for human input, takeover, or policy-exception handling; broader than approval
Evidence	Retained protocol, provider, test, or deployment facts supporting a claim
External account	Product-side tenant, workspace, organization, or account bound to an AIP tenant
Fencing	Token or revision rule preventing a stale worker from completing work after ownership changes
Frozen connector SDK	Stable trusted execution and lifecycle contract implemented by production connectors
Gateway	Boundary that authenticates, validates, authorizes, routes, and translates protocol traffic
Governed input	Immutable action data and policy context bound to an approval or plan
Handler	Admitted implementation of one callable capability
Idempotency key	Caller-supplied key used to detect replay of the same scoped business intent
Implementation conformance	Evidence that software follows a protocol or profile contract
Isolated-live qualification	Evidence from an exact build against a pinned real product in a controlled topology
Lease	Time-bounded exclusive ownership of queued or recoverable work
Manifest	Participant discovery document containing identity, profiles, capabilities, and resources
MCP projection	Representation of AIP-backed behavior as MCP tools, resources, prompts, tasks, or metadata
Native AIP	Full AIP semantic envelope and lifecycle, without compatibility projection
Operational read model	Authorized durable view of action, approval, transaction, callback, event, receipt, or resource state
Outcome unknown	State where a provider side effect may have happened but no definitive result is available
Participant	System that sends or receives native AIP messages
Plan	Durable transaction description bound to exact input, identity, policy, and expiration
Principal	Human, agent, service, tenant, customer, contact, or system identity
Profile state	Durable state owned by a compatibility profile, such as MCP sessions or A2A push configuration
Qualification	Evidence that one exact build and deployment works with its configured dependencies
Receipt	Hash-linked evidence of a protocol decision or state transition
Reconciliation	Provider lookup that resolves an unknown external outcome without blind retry
Replay	Duplicate delivery of a message, action intent, event, or callback
Resource	Discoverable, readable data object exposed by a participant
Resume token	Single-use session credential used to continue authorized retained state
Runtime	Durable owner of actions, sessions, approvals, transactions, events, leases, callbacks, and recovery
Session	Durable relationship grouping related protocol work between principals
Side effect	Declared external consequence such as read, write, delete, message send, financial, or identity change
Stream chunk	Ordered incremental action output or progress record
Tenant	Administrative data and policy boundary resolved from trusted identity
Transaction	Governed execution context for dry-run, plan, commit, reconcile, or compensate behavior
Transport binding	Rules for carrying native AIP messages over HTTP, NATS, SSE, or WebSocket
Trust domain	Administrative boundary that owns identities, policy, capabilities, and signer relationships