DOCS / THE VOCABULARY

What the words mean.

hm borrows its nouns from a factory floor rather than from software, and the words do real work — they are how a plan, a worker and a finished job are told apart. These pages define them one subject at a time, in the order they build on each other. Start at the first if you have not met any of them.

Each page is a reading of a file in the product's own repository, and says which file and when it was last checked against it. Those files are where a definition is decided; nothing on this site edits them, and where the two ever disagree the file is right.

1. 01

   A Works

   The folder on your machine that holds one project and its record, and the boundary every other word in these pages sits inside.

   Defines Works, PrincipalCONCEPTS.md, reviewed 2026-07-30

2. 02

   The ledger

   An automatic, append-only record of every state change in a Works — what moved, when, and which person or agent moved it.

   Defines Ledger, Actordocs/ARCHITECTURE.md, reviewed 2026-07-30

3. 03

   Manifests and tickets

   The two units of work — an initiative and the tasks under it — and the states each one moves through before it counts as done.

   Defines Manifest, Ticket, LatchCONCEPTS.md, reviewed 2026-07-30

4. 04

   Seats, hands, and lines

   How a Works is staffed — the long-lived roles, the short-lived workers, and the divisions the work is organised into.

   Defines Seat, Resident, Hand, Line, BenchCONCEPTS.md, reviewed 2026-07-30

5. 05

   The Superintendent

   The supervisor that turns an intent into a reviewable plan before any agent starts work, and the two roles that keep a Works healthy while it runs.

   Defines Superintendent, Steward, CustodiansCONCEPTS.md, reviewed 2026-07-30

6. 06

   Dispatch and the Gatehouse

   How a task is handed to an agent, what the agent is allowed to touch while it works, and what has to be true before finished work is accepted.

   Defines Dispatch, Gatehouse, Couplingdocs/ARCHITECTURE.md, reviewed 2026-07-30

7. 07

   The org cycle

   The loop a Works runs — goals to plan to execution to review — and the second loop that lets a review change how the company is staffed.

   Defines North Star, Brief, Petition, Reckoning, CadenceCONCEPTS.md, reviewed 2026-07-30

8. 08

   Executors and your model account

   What actually runs inside a seat, why hm is not one of them, and why the model account the agents run against stays yours.

   Defines Executor, BYOKdocs/ARCHITECTURE.md, reviewed 2026-07-30