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Concepts

This section explains the words that ctower uses. Each page answers three questions:

  1. What is it?
  2. Why does it exist?
  3. How do I use it?

Start with Tickets. Then read Stages and Gates. Those three ideas explain how ctower keeps work and proof together.

You want to understand Read
The permanent record for one promised result Tickets
Captured operator intent and outcome accountability Requests
Dated, byte-exact operator agreements and corrections Rulings
Daily decisions, Rulings, executions, and proof Morning digest
The steps that work follows Stages
The checks that can allow or refuse a move Gates
Durable roles and the short-lived teams that fill them Seats and crews
Two-person messages and turning a thread into work Chat
The read-only view of a live work terminal Terminal read
Work that becomes due on a schedule Routines
The nightly review that produces a durable output Dream cycle
One project's work and the cross-project summary Boards and portfolio

A few more terms

A workflow is a versioned set of stages and allowed moves. Versioned means that a saved copy has a fixed identity. A ticket keeps using the exact workflow version that it started with.

Evidence is a saved fact that supports a completion claim. A test result is one example. A verdict is a recorded pass or fail decision about that evidence. Read Proof for the full explanation.

A projection is a read-only view built from saved facts. The Board and Portfolio are projections. You cannot edit them directly.

A refusal is a safe no. Ctower changes nothing and tells you which rule was not met.

Current boundary

Ctower is pre-alpha. The browser described here is a local shadow view for replaceable work. A shadow view is a copy used for testing and inspection. It is not the final product and it is not the only record of the work. The command line and HTTP API remain the exact public development surfaces.

These pages explain current behavior. The CLI reference lists exact commands and flags. The HTTP API reference lists exact operations.