Concepts in Plain Language

Concepts In Plain Language

This page translates common terms into everyday language.

Term	Plain meaning
Agent output	Text or data produced by an AI agent.
Candidate	Useful draft work that is not proven complete.
Accepted	The checker accepted the input shape for this route.
Workflow usable	The report can help the next step.
Operationally usable	The report can guide routing under the selected profile.
Settled	All scoped finite obligations were discharged.
Residual	Work, risk, assumption, or debt that remains.
Residual ledger	A list of residuals that must stay visible.
Missing obligation	A required check that has not been completed.
Blocker	A reason the report cannot be promoted.
Packet	A JSON envelope for candidate work.
Sidecar	Extra report data for handoff, exchange, or human reading.
Phase plan	A recommendation for what to check next.
Safe command	A displayed suggestion, not automatic execution.
Canonical	The implementation treated as the reference. Here, the Python project is canonical.

A Practical Example

An agent says:

This runtime step is ready to reuse.

PIC-TS can turn that into JSON that says:

• the report was accepted;
• the workflow can continue;
• some obligations are still missing;
• the result is not settled;
• packet content must remain candidate-only.

This is useful because the next agent can continue from a structured report instead of guessing what is safe.