Glossary

A quick, plain-language dictionary of the terms you'll meet across Altretta. Where a term has its own section, follow the link to learn it in depth.

Notes & writing

Vault — Your knowledge base: a folder of Markdown files on your own computer that Altretta reads and writes. You own it; there's no lock-in. See First run & your first vault.

Note — A single Markdown file in your vault — one idea, page, or document. See Your first note.

Wikilink — A link between notes written as [[Note name]]. Typing one connects two notes and builds your graph; its reverse shows up as a backlink.

Backlink — The reverse of a wikilink: the list of notes that link to the note you're reading. See Backlinks.

Unlinked mention — A place where a note's name appears as plain text but isn't yet a wikilink — a suggested connection you can turn into a real link. See Backlinks.

Property — A structured field on a note, stored in its frontmatter (e.g. status: draft, tags: [...]). Properties power Bases and filtering. See Tags & properties.

Tag — A #label keyword you attach to notes to group them across folders. See Tags & properties.

Canvas — An infinite, freeform board where you arrange notes, cards, images, and connections spatially — for mapping and thinking visually. See Canvas.

Base — A live table, card, or list view over a set of notes, driven by their properties — like a database view of your vault. See Bases.

Map & Manual — An auto-generated overview of an area of your vault: a map of how its notes connect plus a manual summarizing them, so you (and your AI) can orient quickly. Surfaced to the AI via aingle_vault_map. See Maps & Manuals.

Graph & structure

Graph — The visual network of your notes and the links between them — local (around one note) or global (your whole vault). See Graph view and the star-map.

Semantic graph — The real graph database underneath Altretta, storing your knowledge as triples (subject–predicate–object facts), not just wiki-links. It's what SPARQL and pattern queries run against. See The semantic graph and the MCP tool reference.

Symbol graph — For code: the graph of symbols (functions, types, files) and their cross-file relationships that Altretta builds when it maps a codebase. See Symbols.

Impact Radius — For code: the answer to "what breaks if I change this?" — the set of symbols and files affected by a change, computed from the symbol graph. See Impact Radius.

Verifiability

DAG (signed action history) — Altretta's append-only, hash-linked, Ed25519-signed log of changes to your vault (a directed acyclic graph). Knowledge that goes away is recorded as a signed retraction rather than vanishing from the record. This is what makes time-travel and provenance possible. See Signed history.

Provenance anchor — A cryptographic reference tying a retrieved passage to the exact state of your note in the signed history — proof of what the note said and when. Every grounded answer carries one. See Provenance.

Proof — A cryptographic object that confirms a fact matches the signed history. Fetched with aingle_get_proof and checked with aingle_verify_proof (see the MCP tool reference). See Provenance.

Groundedness — An honest verdict on how well the retrieved evidence supports an answer (e.g. grounded / weak / ungrounded). It's how Altretta admits when the notes don't actually say something. See Grounded, cited answers.

Citation (source:lines) — The way Altretta cites evidence: a note path plus a line range, e.g. decisions/2026-03-db.md:12-19. Every claim points back to its exact source. See Grounded, cited answers.

Time-travel — Browsing, diffing, and restoring any past version of a note from the signed history — because the DAG preserves everything. See Time-travel.

Signing key — Your personal Ed25519 key that signs every change you make, so the signed history can prove who recorded an action. See Your identity & signing key.

AI & connections

MCP — The Model Context Protocol, the open standard Altretta uses to expose your vault to any AI client over a small local endpoint. See Connect your AI and the MCP tool reference.

Review inbox — The place where AI-proposed changes wait for your approval before they're written back to the vault — nothing lands without consent. See The review inbox.

Publishing & the seal

Seal (証) — Altretta's mark. On a hosted published site whose notes carry a valid signature it reads "Verified · Altretta" and links to the site's verify URL; everywhere else it reads "Published with Altretta" and claims nothing. See The verify URL & Verified badge.

Teams & plans

Team brain — A shared, end-to-end encrypted vault for a team, with roles and cryptographic revocation, so knowledge is shared without giving up privacy or control. See Encrypted team brain.

Seat — A paid membership in a team or plan. Every member on a team vault's roster consumes one, whatever their role — Readers included. See Roles & permissions.

Reader — A read-only member of a team brain: they can read shared knowledge but not edit it. Like every other role, a Reader consumes a seat. See Roles & permissions.

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