Terms below are used with exactly the meaning given here throughout this documentation set. Each entry links to the principle section in GARDEN principles where the term is normative.
agent — An LLM-driven program that reads, writes, and reviews code via tools. Normative across all six principles; see GARDEN principles.
canonical name — The single name a concept has across the codebase; synonyms break grep-first discovery. Normative in G — Grep-first Discoverability.
context file — A short hand-maintained instruction file for agents
(for example, AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md) loaded at session start. Normative
in N — Navigable Knowledge.
context rot — Degradation of agent performance as a session grows; primarily a state-tracking failure rather than a reasoning failure. Motivates N — Navigable Knowledge.
context window — The finite token budget an agent can attend to at once. Bounds the sizing rules in A — Atomic Vertical Slices.
deterministic gate — A check (type check, lint rule, test, or CI job) that passes or fails identically on every run, independent of any model. Normative in D — Deterministic Verification.
hop distance — The number of link or directory traversals between an edit site and the knowledge required to edit it safely; the GARDEN target is at most one hop. Normative in N — Navigable Knowledge.
indirection tax — The extra search-and-read cost every layer of indirection (deep inheritance, dynamic dispatch, dependency-injection magic) imposes on an agent; it also raises hallucination risk. Motivates G — Grep-first Discoverability and the rejections listed in R — Regenerable Components.
magic value — A literal whose meaning is not discoverable at its use site. Prohibited under E — Explicit Everything.
managed duplication — Tolerating duplicate code until a clone-detection signal in CI justifies extracting an abstraction, instead of abstracting preemptively. Normative in A — Atomic Vertical Slices.
one-context task — A task whose requisite context fits comfortably in a single agent context window. The sizing target for A — Atomic Vertical Slices.
premature abstraction — An abstraction created before at least three concrete usages exist; it costs agents more than the duplication it removes. Prohibited under A — Atomic Vertical Slices.
progressive disclosure — Layering knowledge so an agent loads a short summary first and follows links only when needed. Normative in N — Navigable Knowledge.
regenerability — The property that a component can be rewritten from scratch against its contract without ripple effects. Defines R — Regenerable Components.
requisite context — The minimum set of files and facts an agent must load to perform a task correctly. Sizing basis for A — Atomic Vertical Slices and N — Navigable Knowledge.
self-certification — An agent declaring its own output correct without a deterministic gate; forbidden under D — Deterministic Verification.
spec drift — Divergence between a spec or contract and the code that claims to implement it. Addressed in R — Regenerable Components.
temporal coupling — A hidden requirement that operations happen in a particular order, not expressed in types or signatures. Prohibited under E — Explicit Everything.
vertical slice — A module containing everything one capability needs (entry point, logic, data access, tests) rather than a horizontal layer. Defines A — Atomic Vertical Slices.