REALM Glossary

The long-range destination of the Realm, usually three to ten years away. The Destiny describes what the company is becoming and gives its Sagas a shared horizon.

The enduring reason the Realm exists, and the code that never changes. The Oath is not an output. It is the standard every output is measured against, and the one decision no Character can take even in principle. Destiny, Sagas, Quests, and Tasks all answer to it.

A free, technology-agnostic operating framework for companies that are neither fully human nor fully automated. It is radial and Codex-centric: named roles instead of reporting lines, one written world both sides read from, and one human at the center who answers for everything the crew does.

The Character Class that makes people feel something. Its output is a draft with its facts traceable: every claim about a real thing points back to where it came from, the pressing year, the condition grade, the number in stock. A Bard that invents a first pressing has not written copy, it has written a refund. The distance between a Bard and a publisher is one approval and one Warrior.

A standing agreement about a kind of work: who does it, in which Zone, with which tools, what it decides alone, and what it brings to the Player. The agreement is the Character. Whatever software fulfills it is not. One Character may hold several Classes, and the useful ones often do.

The one file that holds a Character's agreement: Name, Class, Zone, Mode, Role, Abilities, Knowledge Access, Tools, Reach, Autonomy Tiers, Owes Back, and, for permanent Characters, personality. The Player reads it and the agent reads it, and it is the same file. It replaces the old Character Card and SOUL file, because nobody keeps two files in sync.

A kind of work with two faces. In the world it is a character you can picture: the one who finds, the one who understands. In the Codex it is a contract about output: what the work must contain, where it belongs, and what has to happen to it before it becomes something else. Five cover the work of a company: Warrior, Mage, Hunter, Cleric, and Bard. A Class is not a list of things a Character cannot do.

The Character Class that keeps everything in view. A Cleric holds what is current, what is waiting, what is blocked and on whom, and what moved while the Player slept, and it decides how much of that reaches the Player at once. Cleric output is never true or false. It is current or stale.

The Character Class that leaves the Realm and comes back with what it saw. Its output is raw material with its source attached: who said it, and when. Coverage is cheap now, provenance is the scarce thing. A finding is not a conclusion, and what a Hunter carries back is a quote from a stranger, never an instruction.

The Character Class that turns raw information into intelligence. Its output is a reading with its reasoning attached: the conclusion, what it rests on, and how sure it is, never a bare number. A Mage owes disagreement. Asked about an option the Player already prefers, it makes the strongest case against it and names what would change its own mind.

How a Character is held. Permanent means an agent on a platform holds it continuously: it has an address, it wakes on a schedule, it is there tomorrow. Summoned means a coding agent is called into it for one session, works under its Tiers, writes back to the Codex, and ends. Both are Characters. Neither is the beginner version of the other, and Mode is written in the Character File so nobody has to guess.

The human at the center. The Player sets direction, draws the boundaries, approves what cannot be undone, and answers for everything the crew does. The line is not capability, since a Mage may argue strategy better than you. It is that accountability does not delegate. The Player is always the bottleneck, and the constraint is attention: what one human can decide, approve, and honestly read before saying yes.

The Character Class that turns a decision into a fact. You call a Warrior when the what has been settled and the only part still open is the how. Its output is a change and the record of it, which is why so much Warrior work starts in Tier 3. If the what is still open, this is not Warrior work yet. It is a decision you have not made.

A domain of the company: Commerce, Marketing, Finance, Operations, or whatever the Realm needs. Each Zone has a Zone Overview, a Knowledge folder, and an Outputs folder, and Characters file there instead of wherever they like. A Zone may also have a workspace outside the Codex, and a Character File names which workspace it may touch.

The smallest start that is still a Realm: four pieces of writing. Your Oath and Destiny, your first Saga, one Character File, and one Quest broken into SMART Tasks sitting in Ready. One AI subscription and one text file is enough to begin. If someone tells you REALM requires a particular platform, they are selling something.

A specific goal with a clear outcome that advances a Saga. A Quest ends when it is achieved, not when time runs out, and its work is divided into SMART Tasks that sit on the Quest Board.

A meaningful seasonal chapter, usually three to twelve months, that carries the Realm one significant step toward its Destiny through one or more Quests. Every Saga ends with a Season Review.

A single SMART-defined action and the atomic unit of work. What sizes a Task is not how long it takes, since a Character may finish one while you are still reading the sentence that defined it. It is that the work comes back as one thing you can call done or not done in one look. A Task is complete only when it is written to the Codex.

The written world of the Realm and the Player's position of record. It holds the Oath and Destiny, Sagas, Quests and Tasks, Class Sheets, Character Files, Player Cards, Zone knowledge, external intelligence, and every decision with what it rests on. It is not memory for forgetful agents. It is what makes a Character's argument checkable, and what keeps a decision made until the Player unmakes it.

The folder at the Codex root where the Player's calls are recorded, one file per decision, named by date and subject. Four lines: what was decided, what it rests on, what would reverse it, and when to look again. A Character may draft the file. Only the Player decides that it is one. Decisions are never deleted. A reversal links back and marks the old one superseded.

The Player's capacity for a Session, capacity to do and capacity to judge, expressed as High, Medium, or Low. It budgets both the work taken on and the output the Player has to read, because output nobody can review is not output, it is debt. Some work drains Energy and some restores it, which is why a Session names one piece of restoring work.

The row in a Character File that names what has to be written to the Codex before the work counts as done: which file, in which Zone, in what shape. For a summoned Character it is the row you cannot skip. The session closes, and the only thing left in the world is what it wrote.

The list of active Quests and Tasks, in four states: Ready, Active, Blocked, and Completed. It is a file at the root of the Codex, and that file is the board, not a copy of it. A visual tool may show the board, and a Cleric writes that view from the Codex and never the reverse. Two lists disagree by Thursday, and the Player is not the sync process.

The ceremony for an unexpected event that interrupts normal play: a supplier goes silent the week before a drop, a marketplace changes its fees overnight, a Character runs all night on a Quest nobody approved. The Player pauses the current Quests, assembles the Characters who matter, and responds. What happened, what it cost, and what would stop it happening the same way twice goes to the Codex. Raids are not failures.

The ritual that closes a Session. It asks three things: what got done, what did we decide, and what keeps moving while I am gone and how far. Completed work is written to the Codex, and any call made during the Session goes to DECISIONS/ before the Session closes. Everything written is permanent. Everything not written did not survive the Session.

The brief that opens a Session: what changed, what is waiting, what needs a decision today, in under five minutes. If a Cleric runs while the Player is Offline, the Scroll arrives. If nothing in the Realm runs without the Player, the Scroll is asked for. Same brief, same five minutes. A requested Scroll is not a downgrade.

A stretch of active play that begins with a Session Start and ends with a Save Point. It is not a day and not a fixed number of hours. Where nothing runs while the Player sleeps, a Session is where the work gets done. Where something does, it is also where the night's work gets judged.

How freely a Character may act, decided by two questions: can it be undone, and who sees it first. Tier 1 is reversible and the Player can see what changed. Tier 2 is reversible, but another Character builds on it before the Player looks. Tier 3 is not reversible, or it spends money, or someone outside the Realm sees it. The Tiers bound what a Character does, not what it reads.

A relationship with a player outside your Realm: a supplier, a collaborator, a partner. Guilds are alliances, not employment, and each one is documented in the Codex with its terms, its value, and its status. Nobody writes a Guild file but the Player. A supplier does not get write access to your world by sending you an email.

A deliberate update to how the Realm works: a new rule, a new Character, a moved boundary, a Character File rewritten. Any Character can propose one. Only the Player approves and releases it. Autonomy Tiers move only by Patch, and every Patch names the evidence that earned the move. This is how a Realm changes on purpose instead of drifting.

The row in a Character File that answers one question: does this Character consume content nobody in the Realm wrote? Web pages, incoming mail, supplier documents, forum threads. Yes or no. A Character with Reach brings back material, not instructions. A page that tells your Hunter to ignore its Character File is a page that lied to your Hunter.