Execution vocabulary

The words Harn uses for an execution, its evidence, its conversation history, its external effects, and its run authority. Each entry names the preferred term and the near-synonyms to avoid, so code, receipts, events, and prose all say the same thing. For conversation-unit terms and cross-references to other frameworks, see the Glossary.

Execution evidence#

Execution: One top-level invocation of a compiled Harn program, including all child tasks, agent turns, effects, and its terminal outcome. Avoid: Workflow run, session, trace

Execution fact: An ordered, typed, redacted statement about something that occurred during one execution and can be durably replayed. Avoid: Telemetry event, log line, span

Execution evidence: The complete durable fact stream for one execution plus the identity and integrity metadata needed to verify its order and terminal state. Avoid: Observability data, trace, event dump

Projection: A replaceable view derived from execution evidence, such as a run record, OpenTelemetry trace, CLI event stream, Replay Lab view, or host presentation. Avoid: Source of truth, duplicate record

Run record: The materialized Harn product view of one execution, derived from its execution evidence for inspection, replay, evaluation, and export. Avoid: Event log, workflow-only record

Flight recording: An opt-in, bounded sequence of source locations and control-flow outcomes that shows the exact code path taken by an execution without recording values by default. Avoid: Opcode trace, debug log, always-on span

Conversation history#

Conversation message: A provider-neutral durable turn. Native assistant calls use tool_calls with id, name, and arguments; native results use tool_result with the matching tool_call_id. Provider adapters project these facts onto their wire formats. Avoid: Provider message, Anthropic block, OpenAI message

Provider continuation: Opaque provider-bound state required to continue a prior model turn. It is kept apart from conversation content and returned only to the provider that created it. Avoid: Reasoning text, message block, transcript content

External actions#

External action: A consequential effect in a provider or account outside the current Harn workspace. Avoid: Tool call, transaction, side effect

Action intent: An immutable, normalized proposal whose fingerprint covers the exact actor, provider, capability, environment, payload, and external spend. Avoid: Request, plan, tool arguments

Action grant: A time-bounded authorization tied to exactly one action-intent fingerprint and its external-spend ceiling. Avoid: Approval, permission

Action receipt: A durable provider-neutral record of whether an external action was confirmed, denied, not dispatched, or left indeterminate. Avoid: Result, response, log

Reconciliation: A read-only provider query that resolves an indeterminate action receipt without dispatching the action again. Avoid: Retry, recovery

Run authority#

Prepared run: A run whose declared requirements have been reconciled with host facts, policy, provenance, budgets, and approval availability before execution can begin. Avoid: Preflight, launch config

Authority requirement: A value-free declaration of one filesystem, process, network, secret-consumer, environment, host, MCP, budget, provenance, or startup need. Avoid: Permission string, raw secret

Authority lease: A time-bounded, fingerprinted authorization to execute exactly one prepared run within its granted requirements. Avoid: Session grant, approval receipt

Authority delta: A typed request bound to a parent authority lease and intersected with its ceiling, without mutating or broadening the parent lease. Avoid: Escalation flag, policy exception

Toolchain probe: An exact post-readiness inquiry that discovers toolchain read roots within a previously reviewed authority ceiling. Avoid: Preflight command, ambient path scan

Platform identity broker: A host-side authority that exchanges a value-free identity reference for a short-lived handle bound to one provider, audience, tenant, and consumer. Avoid: Credential fallback, profile chain

Opaque identity handle: A non-transferable, process-local capability to use one brokered platform identity through its declared consumer. Avoid: Token, secret value, bearer credential

Authority receipt: A durable, non-authorizing record of requested, granted, used, denied, and unused run authority and its decider. Avoid: Authority lease, log line