Glossary¶
Status: Current | Last reviewed: 2026-05-28
Canonical terms used across the TrueServe Framework codebase and docs. When you introduce one of these in a doc, link to its entry here.
Runtime targets¶
Vanguard — The developer dev environment. A devcontainer running on either Codespaces or EC2. Custom services run as host processes under Overmind; infra and media run under Docker Compose. Hostnames *.vanguard.dev.trueserve.deloitte.com resolve into this devcontainer, not a remote cluster. See environment modes.
Sentinel — The TrueServe-operated production environment. Runs on GKE in the trueserve namespace. Promoted to via the /promote-to-sentinel skill.
Cloud customer environment — A customer-operated cluster: EKS, AKS, on-prem Kubernetes, or single-host Compose. Same Helm chart as Sentinel, different values file.
City dev environment — A per-engineer EC2 dev box, named after a city (rome, kyiv, istanbul, richmond, macau, shimla). Same topology as Vanguard but mirrored across regions.
Data model¶
agent — A row in the agents table. Carries identity only: id, name, description, surface_config_id, tenant. Does not carry runtime config.
agent_version — A row in agent_versions. Carries the runtime config JSONB. Version 0 is the draft; versions 1+ are published. Exactly one row has is_current_published = true per agent. The orchestrator reads agent config exclusively from this table via resolve_agent_version(). See data model.
agent_configs — Historical view that joined agents + agent_versions. Dropped in init-script 104. If you see it referenced, the reference is stale.
surface — The end-user UI: voice, chat, video, embedded iframe. Implemented by apps/surface-app. Distinct from surface_configs, the DB row that styles a particular surface for a particular agent.
workflow — A directed graph of nodes executed by apps/async-agent. Stored in workflow_configs (identity) + workflow_versions (config JSONB), mirroring the agent split.
execution — A single run of a workflow. Has a UUID execution_id, a status, a phase/goal stack, and a stream of events. Persisted in workflow_executions; per-node debug rows live in workflow_node_executions keyed off the same execution_id. The async-agent API exposes them at /api/v1/executions/{id} and live-streams events on /sse/executions/{id}. Previously called a "case" in legacy code paths — that name is gone as of 2026-05-28.
trigger rule — A row in trigger_rules that fires a workflow when a conversation event happens (pre, post, lifecycle hooks).
Protocols and standards¶
A2UI — Agent-to-UI rendering protocol. The orchestrator emits component descriptors; the surface renders them. Always uppercase. See A2UI rendering.
MCP — Model Context Protocol. The standard tool-call surface used by agent-host. Always uppercase.
Pipecat — Open-source real-time pipeline framework that ai-orchestrator extends.
LangGraph — LangChain's stateful workflow framework, used by async-agent.
Telephony¶
SIP — Session Initiation Protocol. Carrier-side signaling.
ARI — Asterisk REST Interface. Used by ari-controller to drive Asterisk over WebSocket.
RTP / SRTP — Media streams. Carried by rtpengine and Janus.
BYOC — Bring-your-own-carrier. The customer brings the SIP trunk; we provide the AI. Typical for Genesys.
BYOVA — Bring-your-own-virtual-agent. The customer brings the contact center; we plug in as the bot. Webex.
BYOT — Bring-your-own-telephony. Salesforce Service Cloud Voice flavor.
WebRTC — Browser-to-server media. Janus is the gateway; coturn is the TURN server.
Audio ducking — Lowering one audio stream's volume while another speaks. Used in translation and underbed mixing. See audio ducking.
Warm hand-off — A transfer where the original agent stays on the line during the handoff. Distinguished from blind transfer. See warm hand-off.
Infrastructure¶
Overmind — Process supervisor used in Vanguard. Reads .devcontainer/Procfile. Replaces what would be a Kubernetes Deployment in Sentinel.
Helm chart — Kubernetes package. The umbrella chart is charts/trueserve-stack; individual services have subcharts.
hostNetwork — A Kubernetes pod option that gives the pod the host's network stack. Required for media services (asterisk, kamailio, janus, rtpengine, coturn) because they need to bind specific IPs and use raw sockets.
Global Accelerator — AWS service that DNATs an anycast public IP to a regional LAN IP. RTP and SIP need dual-interface binding because of this.
Kind — Kubernetes-in-Docker. Used only for ad-hoc Helm chart validation; not part of daily dev. See scripts/kind-optional/.
Tools and integrations¶
integration — A row in the integrations table that holds credentials for a third-party (Genesys org, Salesforce org, OpenAI key, etc.). Encrypted at rest with MASTER_ENCRYPTION_KEY. See secret storage.
tool — A row in the tools table that exposes an action to an agent (a webhook, a SQL query, a Python function). Tools may reference an integration for credentials.
catalog — A user-published bundle of A2UI components. Built by catalog-builder, served by multimodal-service.