nWave glossary
Short definitions for the terms nWave uses, in v4 wording. Each term is defined once; longer explanations live on the linked pages.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| brief | A human-readable rendering of the handoff (brief.md, architecture.md, acceptance.md, plus HTML), produced by nwdes on feature new, slice set and document; the shared surface for reading and discussing a feature. |
| charter | Optional record, one per feature, written by the product owner: intent, exploration, at least one positive and one negative observation. See Understanding delivery artifacts. |
| DES runtime | The predecessor delivery runtime that v4 retires; the name is historical and nWave documents no expansion of it. The v4 installer writes no runtime copy and removes the predecessor's footprint on upgrade. Delivery now runs through nwdes. |
| EXAMINE | The source-blind examination of the whole feature: an examiner judges every fixed expectation from the user's point of view, using only its own observations gathered in a public-only workspace. |
| expectations | The fixed, E-numbered rows stating what every public promise must look like to a user; fixed once per feature by the examiner before oracle authoring. |
| GREEN | The observed pass of the declared verification command on the implemented candidate. See RED. |
| handoff | The one canonical JSON record of a feature, docs/feature/ID/handoff.json in your repository; also the resume point after an interruption. |
| host | The coding application that runs the models and invokes the roles (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, OMP, Cursor, Copilot, Devin). |
| installer self-validation | The installer's own prerequisite checks and final validation report — the verification you get on hosts without a dedicated end-to-end install test. |
| Jev | The remote TypeSafe System One service consulted for bounded, typed semantic judgments; it is authorized by default, is asked once per project at nwave-ai install or nwave-ai project enable on a terminal, and is switched per project with "jev": "authorized" or "jev": "unauthorized" in .nwave/config.json (or per call with the flag); it works only when the TYPESAFE_API_KEY environment variable is set (a technical prerequisite, not the authorization; nwdes only checks that it is set). See Understanding Jev and Configure Jev. |
| lane | An optional isolated Git worktree per feature (nwdes lane open) for parallel work; integrate merges it back without rewriting trunk. |
| oracle | An executable check of a promised behavior through the public surface; authored by the acceptance designer and independently approved before craft begins. |
| paradigm | The implementation style a slice declares — functional, object-oriented or procedural; the route dispatches the functional crafter when it is functional. |
| prefactoring | A behavior-preserving production move declared by DESIGN before new behavior, verified before the move and after it, before the new behavior exists. See Understanding design rigor. |
| promise | A public outcome a feature commits to ("the search result is returned"), recorded as a P-numbered row. |
| RED | The observed failure of the missing behavior on the declared verification command, before implementation. |
| review | An independent examination of an artifact by the matching reviewer role; one fresh whole-candidate review is required per delivery, and embedded slice reviews are optional early feedback. |
| role | A specialist agent with its own skills: product owner, architect, acceptance designer, crafter, reviewer, examiner, and others. |
| root assistant | The session you talk to: it orchestrates, passes role prompts verbatim, reads real results, and decides the next step. |
| route | How a Request travels: spine waves, host-led nwdes steps, or working directly. Chosen by what must survive the session and the cost of a late refusal. |
| S / M / L | The working size assessment a Request opens with, with its reason; an explanation of a judgment that never decides the route. |
| slice | One observable behavior of a feature, tied to the promises it serves; the first slice is the walking skeleton — one thin public path end to end — and later slices extend it with explicit dependencies. |
| spine waves | The /nw-* commands (discover, discuss, design, distill, deliver, ...) that carry delivery gates and independent review for a whole feature. |
| throughput | Running several features in parallel on one machine, admitted by real capacity (memory, then CPU), not by an agent count. See Throughput and swarm. |
| verification command | The command a slice declares; the host runs it to observe RED and GREEN. nwdes never runs it. |
See also Understanding nwdes for how the pieces fit together, and For your assistant for who runs what.