Entity glossary
The 14 stable concepts used by Nautilo's relationship matrix, separated by identity, collaboration, authority, scope, and execution.
Entity codes use three uppercase letters. REL is reserved for relationship
IDs and never names an entity.
| Code | Concept | Working meaning |
|---|---|---|
ACT | Actor | A Human-or-Agent participant identity used for Room membership and attribution. Actor answers “who is at the table?”; it is not the universal authorization principal. |
AGT | Agent | A persistent machine person with profile, voice, memory, tools, and scoped working context. Agents participate in Rooms and execute work. |
CAP | Capability | One atomic permission. Roles bundle Capabilities; runtime policy uses them to decide what a Human may do. |
CHN | Channel | A communication or client surface. In the current model, much channel behavior is represented through Room and session context instead of a separate durable row. |
CON | Connection | A scoped authenticated handle for an external system, such as an OAuth grant or API credential. It is not a Human sign-in factor. |
DEV | Device | The target durable identity for a physical or virtual endpoint. Installation, session, and Relay identities exist, but the unified first-class Device model remains future architecture. |
GRP | Group | A server-scoped membership bag through which Humans receive Roles. |
HUM | Human | A real person and the subject of the permission system. Human participation in a Room is represented through a user-kind Actor. |
NSP | Namespace | The content and access boundary attached to Room work. Memory, artifacts, and scoped Connections resolve through Namespace context. |
RLY | Relay | An authenticated executor that lets authorized Server work reach another machine or surface without moving policy authority out of the Server. |
RMS | Room | The multi-human, multi-agent collaboration context where conversation and durable work live together. |
ROL | Role | A named bundle of Capabilities carried through Group membership. |
SRV | Server | A private deployment and the current trust, policy, and data boundary. Federation is direction, not current deployment behavior. |
TOL | Tool | A callable capability through which a Human or Agent performs work, subject to policy and runtime availability. |
Three distinctions that prevent bad implementations
Participant is not permission subject
Actor is deliberately narrow. Humans and Agents both need one participant shape for Room membership and attribution, but authorization must still resolve to the Human, Agent, policy, or resource that actually owns the decision.
Channel, Device, and Relay are different
A Channel is software interaction shape. A Device is the planned durable endpoint identity. A Relay is an executor registered to reach another machine. Treating those as synonyms creates incorrect ownership and key relationships.
Room, Namespace, and Group are different axes
Rooms define who is collaborating. Namespaces bound the content made available to that work. Groups carry server-wide authority. Sharing a Room does not silently make its participants one permission Group.
See the relationship matrix for the direct, indirect, runtime, and deliberately absent edges between these concepts.