Glossary

The words this documentation uses in a sense of its own, one sentence each, with the page that defines the word.

• record: the signed, append-only facts about a project’s decisions, patterns, notes and tasks, kept in the repository’s .mnema/ and committed with the code. How it works
• tree: one place a record is kept. Three exist: the public tree is .mnema/, committed with the repository, so it reaches every clone; the private tree is under the project’s .git/mnema/, is not committed, and so is not in a clone; the global tree is global/ in the data directory (~/.mnema, or $MNEMA_HOME) and keeps what outlives a project. Every write says which tree it landed in. How it works, Your first record
• tail: the directory of signed segments one machine writes inside a tree; a record holds one tail per machine, and each is proved in its own seq order by its own hash chain. FORMAT.md §4, Reading many tails
• checkpoint: a signature over a contiguous range of one tail’s events, which verify checks; an event after the last checkpoint is chained but not yet signature-covered. FORMAT.md §6, What it proves
• run: a span of work that a run.started event opens and a run.ended event closes. FORMAT.md §6.7
• rung: how far a host goes with mnema, from (a) the MCP server and rules in a file, through (b) the opening of a session and (c) a refusal before a write, to (d) a pause for a person. How each claim is held
• stack: a set of skills and agents that mnema stack add installs from a plan shown whole, and whose adoption is recorded as a signed fact. Stacks, Features
• agent key: a key an agent signs with, which a member enrolled for that agent (agent.enrolled); it shows the member enrolled it, not that the agent is who a name says. What it proves, What a session is handed
• census: the counts and notes verify prints beside its verdict, such as the tails read, the backup keys that sign nothing, and the moves it does not apply; a census note is information, not a break. Your first record, Verify without installing
• witness: a party outside the repository that attests a checkpoint’s digest. mnema witness stamp has the OpenTimestamps calendars attest it, so a chain rebuilt later cannot claim an older history. mnema witness sigstore is not a witness level: it dates the checkpoint only on Sigstore’s log, and --require witnessed does not count it. What it proves, FORMAT.md §8