Glossary

Arena : Validator-owned hardware, workload, policy, and service boundary for one qualification domain.

Atomic target : One reward identity that owns several inseparable slot members and displaces their overlapping singleton identities.

Artifact provider : A validator-registered, data-only policy that fixes one sealed-artifact kind, binding ABI, build phase, load phase, and reviewed implementation. A bundle selects a provider by ID; it cannot register callbacks or extend the provider table.

B / B′ : Complete-engine reads of the frozen incumbent evaluation stack. B opens the comparison. Current v7 takes B′ only when B/C cannot decide; current v8 always takes B′ because pristine-quality control consumes the second stock read. Historical policies used additional bookends.

C : A complete isolated candidate engine equal to the incumbent stack except for exactly one registered target delta.

Contribution : A bounded semantic improvement associated with one registered target. It may exist as hostile proposal content or as reviewed source whose selected bytes remain bound to the crowned payload digest.

Crown : A transactional settlement result backed by two matching PASS qualifications whose seven required authority/attempt/report/selection digests differ. It advances an evaluation stack; it does not ship code. Digest distinctness does not attest separate operators, hosts, or infrastructure failure domains.

Direct-artifact declaration : The manifest's closed description of artifact exports, semantic bindings, specialization, launch parameters, resources, and lifecycle. It contains no candidate runtime callback.

Direct-artifact runtime : Validator-owned scheduler-rank code that reopens a sealed publication, admits its observed device ABI, materializes parameters and resources from the live slot call, launches it, and emits execution evidence.

Engine release : A signed, chain-independent, integrated-only Cacheon Engine artifact with reproducible runtime builds, exact model receipt, native artifacts, SBOM, provenance, policy manifests, and a deterministic serving context.

Evaluation stack : Content-addressed arena incumbent that may contain hostile crowned proposal references. It exists only inside the referee system.

Integrated contribution : Reviewed Cacheon-owned source with immutable attribution and an integration record. Integration is a separate human/release-engineering decision after a crown.

NO_DECISION : Qualification outcome indicating that valid authority could not be established. It is neither candidate failure nor success.

Pristine T : Candidate-free, untimed reference engine and hidden quality authority. It grades sealed trajectories after all candidate engines are destroyed.

Proposal : Content-addressed untrusted submission admitted for a specific target. It is not installed source, a crown, or a release.

Qualification : The complete registered evidence procedure: screens; a sealed current speed schedule (v7 resident B/C with conditional B′, or v8 two-process B/C/B′); registered eager audit A; candidate teardown; pristine T quality grading; exact-schema decision; and retained evidence.

Reproduction pending : State after one authoritative PASS. Settlement requires a second independent matching PASS under the seven digest-distinctness checks; the lower reproduced speedup is used.

Release stack : Chain-independent EngineReleaseManifest containing only integrated contribution references. It has no arena or proposal content.

Sealed CUBIN publication : The content-addressed CUBIN files and canonical index produced by the registered CuTe provider's hermetic prebuild. It is one provider-specific form of a sealed direct artifact, not a miner-supplied host launcher or JIT input.

Sealed direct artifact : A contribution execution form in which the manifest is a closed launch program and runtime execution uses validator-built, sealed device code. The provider, compilation profile, publication, observed ABI, and launch plan are independently bound authorities.

Slot : Validator-owned execution ABI inside the pinned engine. Slots define how a component is invoked; targets define how a contribution is identified and rewarded.

Target : Smallest registered semantic reward identity. A normal proposal resolves to exactly one singleton or atomic target.

Weight intent : Journaled desired chain publication derived from the pure global emissions projection. It remains pending until confirmed by later chain observation.