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Terminology
Umbrova edited this page Jul 10, 2026
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Ladderline uses a fixed, deliberately small vocabulary. Contributors should never introduce a synonym for any of these terms — not in code, comments, commit messages, or docs — since consistency here is what makes the CLI self-explanatory.
| Term | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Ladder | The career framework file — a set of competencies with current/next-level descriptions | senior-to-staff-eng.yaml |
| Tag | A single competency/row on a ladder | technical-direction |
| Note | A single evidence entry — a dated, short record of something observed | "Pushed back on the caching design..." |
| Notag | A note saved without a tag, because it doesn't yet cleanly fit a competency | reuses the word "tag" deliberately — a note either has a tag, or is a notag |
| Case | The final assembled output handed to a calibration process | ladderline case "John Doe" |
| Cycle | A named review period (a date range) that scopes which notes a case pulls from | 2026-Q1 |
| Dashboard | The local web view (person / team grid / insights / notes tabs) | ladderline dashboard |
| Track | Start recording evidence about a person | ladderline track "John Doe" |
--as |
The relationship between the manager and the tracked person |
report, self, mentee, cross-team, peer
|
- Note, not "log" — avoids reading as a machine/observability log; this is human, qualitative evidence.
- Case, not "packet" — matches the language managers already use ("build the case for promotion").
- Notag, not "unfiled"/"freeform" — reuses "tag" instead of introducing a new noun, so the relationship between the two concepts is obvious without explanation.
- Cycle, not "period" or "season" — plain, unambiguous, matches how most companies already talk about review cycles.
packet, log, unfiled, freeform, relationship (flag name — replaced by --as), add-person (command — replaced by track).