Glossary¶
Terms this project uses precisely. Where a word has a loose industry meaning and a specific meaning here, the specific one is what the code implements.
Adapter¶
The per-provider module that translates a WireRequest into a provider's wire format and
its responses back into events. Adapters only translate; they never retry, validate, or
measure.
Alias¶
A tier name (small, medium, large) that resolves to a concrete model per provider
through the catalog.
Attempt¶
One try against one resolved target. A request may involve several, across retries and fallback; the full trail is on every result.
Capability¶
Something a model can do, paired with the provenance of how we know.
Cassette¶
Recorded HTTP traffic replayed in tests, so conformance can run without credentials.
Catalog¶
The data file mapping aliases to per-provider targets, and artifact ids to pinned, hash-verified downloads.
Conformance suite¶
The shared test suite every adapter must pass. It proves our code matches our claims; the drift check proves our claims still match upstream.
Descriptor¶
Frozen, declarative data about a provider: how to build its adapter, what configuration it needs, how it spells reasoning effort, what it supports.
Drift check¶
The semi-automated audit comparing contract snapshots against providers' current public documentation.
Event stream¶
The generation primitive. A generation is an ordered stream of typed events; the non-streaming API drains it.
Fallback¶
Moving to the next target in a route after the current one fails.
Health gate¶
Skipping a target that recently failed, for a short TTL, so one dead endpoint does not cost every request its full timeout.
Mechanism¶
How structured output was requested: grammar, json_schema, json_mode, or prompt.
Recorded on every result.
Posture¶
How much of a machine local inference may commit: conservative, balanced, or
aggressive.
Projection¶
Rewriting a schema for a provider's wire format (stripping keywords a grammar compiler cannot handle efficiently). Never changes what is validated client-side.
Provenance¶
Where a capability value came from: default, catalog, discovered, probed, or
override. Weakest to strongest — an application's deliberate override outranks
everything the library collected.
Repair¶
Re-prompting the same model with validation errors after a schema violation, within a bounded budget.
Route¶
An ordered list of targets plus policy: retries, health gating, and failure-class-specific chains.
Sentinel model¶
A model id meaning "the provider chooses" (Copilot's auto). Capabilities for one are the
conjunction across every candidate.
Sidecar¶
The OpenAI-compatible HTTP service. A wire codec around a normal client, never a second core.
Target¶
Where a request goes: an alias, or provider:model.
TTFT¶
Time to first token, measured by the core at the first content event, identically for every provider.
Wire request¶
A fully-resolved request handed to an adapter: concrete model, chosen mechanism, projected schema, translated reasoning effort, merged options.