Glossary
The words Crumble uses, and the ones it avoids.
These definitions are copied from the canonical glossary in crumble-project/bot. If they differ, that file wins.
Bot
An independently configured assistant with its own identity, memory, capabilities, and responsibilities.
Avoid: Persona, session.
Bot request
A bot’s proposal for a new bot, which the owner approves, edits, or declines in the bot chat. An approved bot is independent of the bot that asked for it.
Avoid: Bot creation request.
Bot chat
The continuous direct-message exchange between a bot and its owner, including work the bot performs in the background.
Avoid: Conversation session, new chat.
Bot chat delivery
The progress of an owner’s message from sending to confirmation in the bot chat’s transcript, including failed sends and retries.
Avoid: Message execution, completed bot work.
Message gateway
A connection that sends the owner’s messages from an external platform to an existing bot chat and returns only their associated answers. Discord is the first supported platform.
Avoid: Chat mirror, new session.
Group chat
A conversation between the owner and several bots, with one shared transcript in which every message shows its sender. It is separate from each member’s bot chat.
Avoid: Room, channel, group session.
Transcript
The complete visible history of a bot chat or group chat, including messages, replies, tool activity, and compaction events.
Avoid: Model context.
Working context
The selected recent messages, summaries, instructions, and recalled material available to the bot for its next response.
Avoid: Full history, transcript.
Compaction
Summarizing older working context while keeping the original transcript available to the owner.
Avoid: Deleting history, starting a new chat.
Reply
A new message linked to an earlier transcript message, recalling that message and bounded surrounding context for the bot.
Avoid: Fork, branch, session.
Shared
Available to every bot that opts in, as opposed to belonging to one bot. Memory, skills, and MCP servers are either shared or a bot’s own.
Avoid: Global, public.
Skill
A package of instructions for a class of task: a main document with a name and description, plus optional reference documents loaded only when needed. A skill is a default, shared, or a bot’s own.
Avoid: Prompt snippet, plugin.
Installed skill
A shared skill installed from a folder in a public GitHub repository. Nobody can edit it; the owner updates it from upstream or makes an editable copy.
Avoid: Imported skill, remote skill.
Pinned skill
A bot’s own skill the owner pinned: bots and reviews can’t change it, and cleanup leaves it alone. The owner can still edit it.
Avoid: Locked skill, immutable skill.
Learned change
A change a bot or its review made to its own skills or memory, recorded with its source and reversible by the owner.
Avoid: Auto-save, self-update.
Coding job
Work a bot hands to a separate agent in its workspace, for work that runs beside the chat: several tasks at once, or one that would block the chat for long. The job’s answer returns to the bot’s chat.
Avoid: Subagent, session, sub-chat.
Job question
A question a coding job asks the owner when the answer changes what it builds. The job waits until the owner answers in the bot chat or on the job’s panel, then continues.
Avoid: Prompt, approval, held action.
Automation
A prompt a bot receives once at a set time, repeatedly on a schedule, or whenever an event arrives at an event source, answered in its bot chat. The owner or a bot can create one.
Avoid: Task, scheduled task, routine, cron job.
Script automation
An automation that runs a shell command in its bot’s workspace instead of sending a prompt to the bot chat. Only a bot with coding jobs has script automations, and only for itself.
Avoid: Script task, cron job, routine, script job.
Event relay
The Doorstep server that receives webhooks for the account and forwards them to Crumble over Crumble’s own outbound connection, so Crumble needs no public address.
Avoid: Webhook proxy, tunnel.
Event source
One webhook address on the event relay, named by the owner and usable by every bot of the account. Each event that arrives there starts the automations that use the source.
Avoid: Webhook, hook, trigger.
Workspace
A bot’s persistent files, on a disk only that bot and its jobs can reach. A bot with coding reads, edits, and runs commands there itself, in its chat and group chats, and its jobs work there too. The machine running them starts and stops as needed.
Avoid: Sandbox, container, VM (in product language).
Credential
A secret value the owner gives one bot for a list of hosts. The bot’s commands and its jobs use it through a placeholder, so the value never enters the workspace.
Avoid: Secret, API key, environment variable (in product language).
GitHub App
A GitHub identity the owner creates in Crumble on one GitHub account and assigns to bots. In that account’s repositories, the bots’ coding jobs commit, push, and open pull requests as its slug[bot] user, through the GH_TOKEN credential, or as the owner when the owner signed in through it. A bot uses at most one per account.
Avoid: GitHub integration, machine user, bot account.
Machine account
A GitHub user the owner creates for bots and adds to Crumble with a personal access token. Bots assigned to it act as it on GitHub wherever none of their GitHub Apps does, and commit as it by default, with commits signed by its signing key. A bot uses at most one.
Avoid: Machine user, service account, bot user.
Login
A username and password, with an optional one-time code, that a bot’s desktop jobs can fill into web pages on given hosts. Unlike a credential’s, the value enters the workspace, in the page it is filled into; the password never reaches the bot’s model or transcript.
Avoid: Account, saved password (in product language).
Password manager
1Password or Bitwarden Secrets Manager, connected to an account so any secret the owner enters can be read from it instead of stored in Crumble.
Avoid: Vault provider, secret store.
Bot desktop
A bot’s own graphical desktop, with a browser and apps, inside its workspace. Not the Crumble desktop client.
Avoid: Den, bot screen, virtual desktop, computer.
Desktop job
Background work a bot hands to a separate agent that operates the bot desktop’s windows with mouse and keyboard. The job’s answer returns to the bot’s chat.
Avoid: Den job, computer use session, browser agent.
Taking control
The owner operating the bot desktop directly, which pauses desktop work until the owner hands control back.
Avoid: Takeover, remote control, screen sharing.
Intent check
A check, before a desktop job’s acting call runs, of whether the action is irreversible and whether it follows from the owner’s request. Run by the judge model, never by the job itself. An action that fails it is held until the owner approves or declines it.
Avoid: Guardrail, safety check, approval gate.
Judge model
The model the owner chooses for the account that runs every intent check.
Avoid: Classifier, checker model, supervisor.
Vision model
The model the owner chooses for the account that reads images for bots whose model can’t. It describes each image, including any visible text, and the description takes the image’s place in the bot’s working context; the transcript keeps the image. Off unless the owner chooses one.
Avoid: Image model, OCR model, captioner.
Admin
A user who manages the server: its users, invite links, sign-up, and the settings every workspace shares, such as size and coding image. The first account is an admin; admins can make others admins.
Avoid: Owner (each user owns their own bots), superuser, root.
Invite link
A one-time link an admin creates so one person can create an account while sign-up is closed, with a password or a passkey.
Avoid: Invitation code, referral.