Glossary

Action. Two different things, always qualified in these docs:

• A marketplace action is one operation of a pack, such as io.b3os/github/create-issue@1.2.0, called with POST /v1/actions/call.
• A browser action is one step of a vision session's act call or a render script: navigate, click, type and the rest.

Artifact. A file render produces (an image, an MP4, a GIF, a poster, captions), served from usercontent.b3os.org through a signed URL and kept for 7 days. IDs start with art_.

Beat. One unit of a render video script: what the narrator says and the browser actions that happen while it is said.

Callable. What a routine step uses: a product (vision/scrape@1), a core step (core/http@1), another routine, or a marketplace action.

Connection. A credential stored in the vault, with an ID starting conn_. B3OS injects it into outbound requests at the egress proxy, only for the hosts it is bound to, so the credential never reaches your code or a model.

Dev baseline. A measurement taken on the beta node during development without the benchmark lock. Dev baselines explain design choices. They are floors, not product results.

Durability. How much of a routine run is written to disk: ephemeral (memory only), standard (each effect durable before later steps run) or strict (the intent and the result of every effect step).

Edge. The Cloudflare Worker at beta-api.b3os.org that checks keys, scopes and limits, answers account operations itself and forwards everything else to the node.

Effect class. How an action or step touches the world: pure (computes from its input), read, write or irreversible. It decides what B3OS retries on its own (only pure and read) and the hints an MCP client sees.

Egress guard. The check every outbound request you can steer passes through. It resolves the address once, connects to exactly that address, and refuses loopback, private networks, the node's own addresses and cloud metadata.

Grant. The api field of a sandbox: the scopes, spend cap and connections that code inside the sandbox may use.

Hook. The inbound webhook URL of a routine trigger or a pack trigger subscription. Its ID (hk_) is unguessable, and every delivery must carry a valid signature.

Job. A long-running operation (crawl, batch scrape, video, routine run, extraction) with one shared contract for waiting, streaming, webhooks and cancel. See jobs.

Node. A B3IQ machine running b3osd, the B3OS daemon. The beta has one node, n1.

Pack. A versioned bundle of marketplace actions and triggers, described by a signed b3pack.json and named <namespace>/<name>, such as io.b3os/github. See packs.

Principal. The identity a request runs as: an API key, a CLI token, a dashboard session or a sandbox. Every principal belongs to one organization and one project.

Profile. Saved browser cookies and storage (prof_) that vision sessions, scrapes and render jobs load so an agent starts signed in.

Provenance. Where a published number comes from: measured by B3OS with raw data, or vendor, independent, competitor-run or affiliated. Every number also states its vantage and side.

Routine. A durable workflow (rtn_). Publishing it creates an immutable version (ver_); each execution is a run (run_) made of steps.

Scope. A permission such as vision:run. See keys, scopes and principals.

Session. In vision, a browser session (brs_): one dedicated browser, claimed from a warm pool. In the dashboard, a sign-in session held in a cookie. These docs say which.

Signal. A named message sent to a running routine, completing a step that waits for it.

Snapshot. A saved copy of a sandbox's memory and disk (snap_) that new sandboxes restore from. A template (tpl_), such as base or agent, is the snapshot a fresh sandbox starts from.

Stream ticket. A single-use, 30-second credential (tkt_) that opens one WebSocket or event stream from a browser, which cannot send an Authorization header.

Tier. What served a scrape: cache, fetch (plain HTTP) or browser (Chrome).

Trigger. What starts a routine run besides the API: a cron schedule, an interval, a webhook, or a pack trigger. A pack trigger becomes a trigger subscription (tsub_) when the routine version is published.

usercontent. The host usercontent.b3os.org, which serves only bytes you control (render artifacts and sandbox port previews), never with cookies.

Vantage. Where a measurement was taken from: same-host, same-region, or cross-region from a named place.

Warm pool. A set of browsers, browser contexts or restored microVM slots prepared before any request, so a request claims one instead of starting one.