Glossary
Short definitions for terms used on this site. Each also appears in
context at first use on the front page where possible.
- MCP
- Model Context Protocol: a common way many AI assistants connect to external tools.
- Tool metadata
- The description, input and output schemas, and annotations a tool publishes so an assistant knows what the tool claims to do.
- Canonical hash
- A fingerprint of tool metadata after a fixed normalization step, so the same claim always hashes the same way.
- Merkle tree
- A tree of hashes ending in one root fingerprint for a whole batch of entries. Changing any entry changes the root.
- Signed tree head
- The Merkle root plus a digital signature, published so others can check that a specific tree state was attested by the log’s key.
- Inclusion proof
- Evidence that a specific entry is part of a tree with a given root.
- Consistency proof
- Evidence that a later tree still contains an earlier tree, so history was extended rather than rewritten.
- Drift
- A change in a tool’s canonical metadata relative to an earlier observation of the same server and tool.
- Static bundle
- The JSON files under
/log/ that anyone can download or mirror and check with plumb verify-log --bundle.