Glossary

Artifact

Immutable bytes addressed by digest. An ecosystem defines how its metadata names and groups artifacts.

Availability mode

The [availability].mode value none, dc, or ha. Mode none runs one node. The distributed modes coordinate replicas across configured datacenters.

Authority

The right to commit mutations for an ownership group at its current epoch.

Datacenter

A failure domain containing one or more distributed members.

Frontier

A monotonic serial showing how much ordered state a replica or derived view has applied.

Index

A configured artifact endpoint with one ecosystem and one role.

Index role

The source model for an index. A role can be cached, hosted, or virtual.

Member

A configured distributed node with a stable identity, datacenter, address, and role.

Placement

Evidence that a node or datacenter holds verified bytes for a digest.

Read-only process

A process configured with read_only = true. It rejects mutations without changing the availability mode.

Reclamation

Removal of unreferenced content after reference checks, retention rules, and recovery constraints permit deletion.

Replica

A distributed member that applies committed state and bytes and rejects client mutations.

Shadowing

Precedence for one candidate supplied by more than one virtual-index member. The ecosystem owner defines the candidate key. PyPI uses the distribution filename by default, so shadowing one file does not isolate every version of its project.

Upstream

An external source consulted by a cached index.

Writer

A member that accepts client mutations for an ownership group.