Glossary

anyone reading the Taskbay docs who meets an unfamiliar term. You will have a short definition of each term and a link to the page that explains it in full.

> Who this is for: anyone reading the Taskbay docs who meets an unfamiliar term. You will have a short definition of each term and a link to the page that explains it in full.

Terms are in alphabetical order. Taskbay is pre-1.0, so names and behavior can change between minor versions.

A2A
The Agent2Agent protocol that Taskbay speaks as a client, over JSON-RPC or HTTP+JSON (gRPC is refused). Taskbay accepts A2A 1.0 agents, and v0.3 agents through the SDK's compatibility mode. See Compatibility.

A2UI
A format in which an agent describes a small interface as JSON, and the console draws it with its own components. Taskbay renders a subset of the v0.9 Basic Catalog in the chat view, only for agents that advertise the A2UI extension. See A2UI reference.

AG-UI
A protocol spoken by AG-UI client runtimes, separate from A2A. Taskbay does not speak it to agents; it can only expose an A2A agent to an AG-UI client through the AG-UI adapter. See Rich content.

AG-UI adapter
An experimental route, POST /api/agents/{agentId}/ag-ui, that lets an AG-UI client drive a durable A2A task. It is off unless A2A_AGUI_ENABLED=true; otherwise the route answers 404. Each run is one durable command, and an interrupt answer is a reply, not an approval. See AG-UI adapter reference and Try the AG-UI adapter.

Agent Card
The JSON document an A2A agent publishes to describe itself: its interfaces, skills, capabilities (such as streaming and push), security schemes and the extensions it supports. Taskbay reads it when you register the agent and decides what to offer from it. See Connect an agent.

Agent credential binding
The one encrypted credential Taskbay holds for an agent, together with the exact HTTPS origins it may be sent to (1 to 20). The kinds are apiKey, bearer, oauthClient and mtls. You store, revoke and re-encrypt it with npm run security:credentials; the browser never sees the secret. See Agent credentials.

Approval (decision request)
A request for a person to authorize one proposed action on a task, stored as a DecisionRequest separate from the task itself. The outcomes are approve, reject, edit, request_changes and delegate, and an approval sends exactly the approved revision to the agent, once. An INPUT_REQUIRED or AUTH_REQUIRED task is never an approval. See Human in the loop.

Artifact and artifact store
An artifact is an output an agent attaches to a task, made of text, data or file parts. The artifact store is a directory (A2A_ARTIFACT_DATA_DIR) where the server keeps binary parts and the original protocol events, named by content digest; database rows hold only metadata. See Rich content and Configuration.

Audit trail
A read-only, newest-first timeline of who did what: approvals and their exact content, ownership changes, sign-ins, provisioning, agent and credential changes, and sent messages. Records are append-only by database trigger, which is immutability, not cryptographic tamper evidence. The organization-wide trail is for administrators. See Human in the loop.

Command (durable command)
A send, reply or cancel that Taskbay saves to the database with an outbox row before answering 202 Accepted; a worker then delivers it to the agent. Its status moves from pending through dispatching to succeeded, or ends failed or uncertain. An uncertain command is never resent automatically. See Durable tasks.

Context (contextId)
The A2A identifier an agent uses to group related tasks and messages. In the console, a conversation is the set of tasks that share one agent, tenant and contextId. A person with only skill grants cannot send a contextId without a task ID, so each of their new tasks starts a new context. See Use the console.

Development identity (local mode)
The sign-in mode where every request is one local administrator, "Local operator", in the organization with slug local. It is the default outside production and for the npx agent-taskbay launcher, which then refuses to listen on a non-loopback address. A production build accepts it only with both A2A_AUTH_MODE=development and A2A_ALLOW_DEVELOPMENT_AUTH=true. See Sign in and roles.

Embedded and external worker
The worker is the set of background loops that dispatch commands, hold streams, poll agents, sweep approvals and send notifications. Embedded mode (the default) runs them inside the web server process; external mode (A2A_COMMAND_WORKER_MODE=external) runs them as npm run worker:tasks and requires PostgreSQL. See Running and workers.

Escalation and due time
A due time is a deadline set on a task's assignment, in the future and within a year. When it passes, the escalation sweep hands the task once to the target named in an administrator's escalation policy (for the organization or one agent) and raises its escalation level. With no enabled policy, the task is only shown as overdue. See Human in the loop.

Extension
An optional capability an agent opts into by listing its URI in the Agent Card. Taskbay defines three: the structured form (typed input fields), the approval request (the agent opens an approval itself) and skill routing (enforces skill-only grants). It also renders the A2UI extension. See Extensions reference.

Grant (agent grant, skill grant)
A rule that gives a subject read or operate permission on one agent (agent grant) or on one skill of it (skill grant). Grants add up, operate includes read, and a non-admin with no grant sees nothing. A skill grant lets people send only to agents that advertise skill routing. See Give people access to agents and skills.

Inbox
One list of the tasks and approvals you may read, across agents. Its views are Needs you (the default), Mine, Overdue, Active, Done and All, with Show and Risk filters. See Approvals and ownership.

Notification
An in-app message to a person, such as an approval waiting or a task assigned or escalated, raised in the same transaction as the event. Read state is per person, and revoking access hides what a notification said. See Notifications.

Notification webhook
An optional signed HTTP POST that Taskbay sends out for each notification to one URL per deployment (A2A_NOTIFY_WEBHOOK_URL, signed with HMAC-SHA256). It is outgoing, and is not the same as a push callback. See Notifications.

OIDC
OpenID Connect, the production sign-in mode and the default when NODE_ENV=production. A person signs in through your identity provider, and Taskbay admits them only if that exact issuer and subject already has an enabled membership; there is no just-in-time account creation. See Sign in and roles.

Organization
The owner of everything in a deployment: agents, tasks, memberships, teams, grants and audit records. A deployment serves one organization (A2A_AUTH_ORGANIZATION_SLUG with OIDC, local in development), and there is no organization switcher. See Identity and access.

Origin allowlist
The list of exact origins in A2A_ALLOWED_AGENT_ORIGINS that outbound calls may reach: Agent Card and interface URLs, OAuth token endpoints and the notification webhook. It is required in production (except demo mode). It is separate from the origins in a credential binding, which limit where that one credential is sent. See Configuration.

PGlite and PostgreSQL profiles
The two database profiles, chosen with A2A_DATABASE_PROFILE. PGlite (the default) is an embedded, file-backed database owned by one process, for local use. PostgreSQL (A2A_DATABASE_URL) is for production and is required for external workers. See Configuration.

Plane A and Plane B
Names used in the security pages for two separate kinds of authentication. Plane A is how a person signs in to the console; Plane B is how the console authenticates to an agent with a vault credential. Plane A tokens are never reused for Plane B. See Identity and access.

Projection and projection rebuild
A projection is the current-state view of a task (header, messages, artifacts) that the screens read, derived from the append-only event ledger. A rebuild (npm run db:projections:rebuild) recomputes projections from retained events and archives without contacting any agent, and keeps the old projection if it fails. See Upgrading and backups.

Push callback
An A2A push notification an agent sends into Taskbay at POST /api/webhooks/a2a/<registration id>, with a per-registration bearer token. It is opt-in (A2A_PUSH_CALLBACK_ORIGIN and A2A_PUSH_SIGNING_KEY) and only makes changes arrive sooner; reconciliation still runs. See Receive push callbacks from agents.

Reconciliation
Polling that keeps tasks current when streams and push miss something: GetTask for each open known task about every 15 seconds, and ListTasks per agent about every 60 seconds. It only updates tasks the console already knows and never reopens a finished task. See Durable tasks.

Revision and content digest
A revision is a numbered, immutable version of an approval's proposed action; a new proposal or a reviewer's edit creates the next one. Its content digest is the SHA-256 of the canonical action. A decision names the revision the reviewer read and fails with 409 if a newer one exists. See Human in the loop.

Role (admin, operator, viewer)
The baseline a membership may do: admin does everything in the organization, operator works on granted agents and skills, and viewer only reads. "Reviewer" is not a role: it means an enabled operator or admin who can decide an approval, and the escalation target must also be one. See Sign in and roles.

Separation of duties
The approval rule that the person who opened a request cannot decide it. It is on by default; a request's policy can turn it off. See Human in the loop.

Subject
The recipient of a grant: the whole organization, one person (a membership) or one team. In the API these are subjectType values organization, membership and team. See Give people access to agents and skills.

Task and task state
A task is a unit of A2A work that Taskbay keeps as a database record, keyed by its own ID, so it survives a closed browser. Its state comes from the agent: SUBMITTED, WORKING, INPUT_REQUIRED (the agent asks a question), AUTH_REQUIRED (the agent needs authorization resolved out of band), or a terminal COMPLETED, FAILED, CANCELED or REJECTED. See Durable tasks and Identity and access.

Team
A named group of memberships that an administrator creates in Settings so one grant can cover several people. Teams cannot be renamed or deleted, cannot be escalation targets, and are not synced from identity-provider groups. See Give people access to agents and skills.

Trust pin
A public key you pin for an Agent Card origin in A2A_TRUSTED_CARD_KEYS, used to verify the card's signature. A signed card that fails verification cannot be used, and A2A_REQUIRE_SIGNED_CARDS=true also rejects unsigned cards. Trust concerns the agent's identity, not who may use it. See Agent credentials.

Vault and vault key ring
The vault is the encrypted agent_credentials table that holds credential bindings (JWE, AES-256-GCM). The key ring is A2A_VAULT_KEYS, a set of keys of which A2A_VAULT_ACTIVE_KEY encrypts new values while older keys still decrypt, so you can rotate. See Agent credentials.

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