Glossary
Glossary
Section titled “Glossary”Terms used in the Are We Drifting? series and across the engineering blog.
Each entry has two lenses: General — the portable concept any team can apply — and Liftmere — our specific implementation, with real paths, commands, and names.
Click any underlined term in a blog post to see its definition inline. This page is the full reference.
buildmere
A codegen kernel — a system that takes a declarative manifest and generates typed artifacts across multiple target languages, with a drift gate that fails CI when any committed artifact diverges from its source. The kernel knows nothing about specific vocabulary types; generators are plugins (kinds).
packages/buildmere — a standalone Go module. Imports nothing from consumers; generated code imports only stdlib. Four shipped kinds: enum, config, error, metric. make gen-vocab / make check-vocab wrap it.
Canonical vocabulary mesh
The shared language of a system, spanning three audiences at once: the systems that serialize a concept, the humans who name and discuss it, and the agents that discover and use it. A tagged vocabulary is the atom; the mesh is what you get when every closed set is declared once and reachable everywhere — compiled into code and, crucially, discoverable at runtime. "Shared vocabulary" undersells it: it is the canonical language the whole system speaks.
Vocabularies are declared once (buildmere manifests; the backlog enums.mjs single source) and projected into Go/TS/Zod/SQL, AND exposed for runtime discovery over MCP — backlog_list_enums, the op-server operations.list / operations.get introspection — so an agent queries the live vocabulary instead of guessing it.
Drift
When two representations of the same concept stop agreeing. Usually slow and silent — a renamed field, a new value added on one side, a generated file edited by hand. The cumulative cost: no single representation can be trusted as authoritative, so every change requires re-checking all of them by hand.
Caught at PR time by the gate wall: check-vocab, check-sqlc, check-mocks, liftmere/* ESLint rules, buf lint, make agents-check, and others.
Drift gate
A check that runs in CI and fails the build when a committed projection diverges from what its source would generate. The load-bearing leg of the governance model — without it, "generated" is just a suggestion.
make check-vocab (buildmere), generate-features --check (feature registry), make check-sqlc, make check-mocks, make agents-check. All exit non-zero on any byte of drift.
Governed Sub-System (GSS)
The unit of architectural governance: a structure (the canonical shape — a folder, file, type, or proto convention), a machine enforcement (a lint rule, compile check, or CI script that fails the build), and one documentation page. Without the enforcement leg, the structure is a wish.
9 frontend GSSs (Feature Layering, UI State System, Fixture Discipline, Design Tokens, Motion, etc.) and 9 backend GSSs (Contract Integrity, Domain Layering, Typed Error Model, etc.). Documented in the FE↔BE governance matrix.
Kind (buildmere)
A vocabulary type in a codegen kernel — a plugin that knows how to parse kind-specific metadata from a manifest and emit typed artifacts for each target language. Adding a new kind adds a new plugin; the kernel does not change.
enum → Go/TS/Zod/JSON-Schema/SQL CHECK. config → Go Config struct + Load/Validate + .env example. error → zero-import Go error structs. metric → OTel instrument set + Factory interface. Lives in packages/buildmere/kinds/.
Manifest
The single canonical YAML declaration of a vocabulary — the one source from which all projections are generated. A manifest is not just a config file; it is a semantic contract that names a concept the system recognizes and declares its shape once across every layer.
*.yaml files under apps/api/internal/*/vocab/. Each declares kind, module, name, and entries. Discovered automatically by buildmere gen-all / check-all.
Maturity ladder
A five-tier scale describing how strongly a governance rule is enforced: (1) compile-enforced — cannot ship; (2) lint-error — PR fails CI; (3) coverage-script — CI script fails on a missing pairing; (4) warn / scoreboard — tracked, non-blocking, during a burndown; (5) convention — documented but unenforced. The tier makes a rule's real status legible at a glance.
Shared across FE and BE. Frontend mostly tiers 1–2 (13 custom ESLint rules + tsc). Backend has a compile-gated core with several sub-systems still climbing from tier 5 toward wired linters.
Op-server
An operation runner that takes a single operation definition (input schema, output schema, handler) and exposes it simultaneously across multiple transport interfaces — REST, MCP, CLI — from one handler. The transport is a projection of the operation definition.
@liftmere/op-server. defineOperation({ name, input, output, handler }) → REST + MCP + CLI. defineMcpServerContract is the drift gate: boots the real MCP SDK and asserts the tool surface matches the operations registry exactly.
Opt-in by structure
A guardrail that self-targets by a file, folder, type, or proto convention and stays dormant until you adopt the shape. Once you adopt the shape, enforcement activates for free — nothing is accidentally enforced on legacy code, and a new structural trigger can ship at error tier day one.
e.g. no-fixture-outside-route fires only in apps/client/src on non-route/story/test files. skeleton-composition fires only when a skeleton.tsx exists. no-uistate-screen-prop fires only on screen.tsx files.
Projection
An artifact generated from a single source — a view of the truth, not the truth itself. A projection can always be regenerated from its source; if it cannot, it is a copy, not a projection. Copies drift; projections are kept honest by a drift gate.
Generated .gen.go files (buildmere), features.generated.ts (generate-features), Postgres read-model tables (event log replay). Each has a paired drift gate.
Read model
A data structure optimized for querying and display, built by projecting from a durable source. Disposable — can be dropped and rebuilt from the source at any time. Because it is derived rather than authoritative, drift is recoverable rather than catastrophic.
Postgres tables (tickets, runs, prs, reviews) built by consumers replaying .devportal/events/YYYY-MM.jsonl. Rebuilt via devportal_state_db_rebuildFromLog. The log is the source; the tables are projections.
Tagged vocabulary
A closed named set where every entry has a stable identifier (how code refers to it), a serialized wire form (how it crosses a boundary), a human label, and optional typed metadata. The atom the whole manifest pattern is built from. Enums, errors, config, and metrics are all instances of this same primitive.
YAML manifests under apps/api/internal/*/vocab/. Fields: name (Go/TS constant), wire (JSON/DB/event string), label (display), metadata (kind-specific). Processed by buildmere.
Wire form
The serialized representation of a concept at a boundary — the string that appears in JSON, a database column, an event payload, or a model's structured output. Kept separate from the code-facing name so the serialized form is a deliberate declaration, not an accident of casing or spelling.
The wire: field in a buildmere manifest entry. e.g. name: Ready, wire: ready. The Go constant is VideoStatusReady; the value on the wire is "ready".