Glossary

Every Dalea-specific term in one place. Use the in-page search (⌘F).

A — F

Audit reason

A short free-text justification required on schema changes, deletions and other reason-required actions, on every tier. Persisted in the audit log. A separate workspace policy decides whether ordinary data-value edits need one too.

Block

An atomic unit of a document: paragraph, heading, blockquote, section, code, spreadsheet, chart, registration table, lookup table, inventory operation, well plate, timeline, file attachment. All blocks have unique IDs.

Branch

A grouping of tutorials in the Learn hub, e.g. Getting Oriented, Document Your Work, Inventory, Build a Data Model, Data Provenance.

Built-in skill

A skill that ships with the platform (e.g. editing_dalea_documents, writing_python_in_dalea, designing_data_environments). Visible to every workspace; cannot be edited or shadowed.

Coarse

A provenance edge that over-approximates on purpose — a candidate source, not a confirmed one. Rendered dashed and badged so it can never pass for an exact observation.

Column

A field definition on a table. Has a type, optional validation, and (for references) a target table.

Column role

A special job assigned to a column. Result tables use dimension / measurement; inventory tables use quantity (which carries the unit), entity link, expiration and label type.

Confirmation card

The inline card the in-app chat shows before running a tool that needs approval. Headed "Confirmation required"; buttons: Decline, Always approve <action>, Approve.

Container

A physical inventory location: freezer, box, plate carousel slot. Containers can nest.

Container type

A schema describing a class of container: its position format (none / numeric / grid / custom), nesting rules, metadata fields.

Dimension

A grouping/filtering axis on a result table. e.g. animal, timepoint.

Unit

The unit of measure a number column is recorded in, set on the column as a registry code (g, mL, mg/kg, °C, vials). Every cell is in that unit; it renders on cells, axes and exports, compatible input converts on entry, and an inventory quantity column may allow several so each item picks one.

Document

A collaborative rich-text + structured-block notebook page.

Egress receipt

A signed record minted when bytes cross the platform boundary: a file download, or a query pulled by an external consumer (OAuth client, API key, connector, or a sandbox-bridged pull). In-app query renders and previews are not releases and mint nothing. The receipt binds the exact version and content hash to that release, and is citable on an external-run deposit to earn a receipt-backed input edge (recorded declared / observed-exact) instead of no edge at all.

Environment

A schema container that holds tables, columns, naming schemes.

External run

A computation performed outside Dalea (e.g. AlphaFold on a connector) whose result artefact is deposited into the provenance graph. The artefact is verified; the computation itself is recorded as declared.

I — N

Impact

The forward provenance walk: everything downstream of an entity. The retraction question — what must be re-examined if this input was wrong.

Inventory item

A physical instance, one vial or one tube. A row in an inventory table, with a quantity, a custody status and usually a location.

Inventory table

A data table of kind inventory_item. The schema for one class of physical stock. Also called an item type.

Item type

An inventory table: the schema one class of physical item follows, designed in the environment designer. Its role columns make it stock-aware.

Knowledge grounding

The in-app assistant's habit of consulting this wiki and your workspace documents before answering knowledge-shaped questions, so terminology stays consistent.

Lot

A manufacturing batch. Multiple items can belong to one lot for traceability.

Manifest

Metadata file shipped with a marketplace package — name, version, dependencies, min Dalea version.

MCP

Model Context Protocol. The protocol Dalea exposes for external LLMs (Claude Desktop, Cursor, ChatGPT) to call tools against your workspace.

Measurement

A numeric value column on a result table. Distinguished from a dimension column.

Naming scheme

A pattern (e.g. SMP-{###}) that auto-generates display IDs for new objects. {###} or {0001} is the zero-padded counter; a {column_name} token interpolates that column's value on the same row.

Node

An immutable version of something in the provenance graph — a file version, a document snapshot, an object version — pinned by content hash. Never the mutable record itself.

O — R

Object

A row in an entity table. e.g. one animal, one sample.

Organisation

The top-level container. Owns workspaces, has members, sits on a tier.

Origin

The backward provenance walk: the source versions, imports, queries and executions that produced an entity.

Package

A reusable artefact published to dalea.market: template, block, environment, addon, or bundle.

Personal skill

A skill authored by you, visible only to you. Lives alongside workspace and built-in skills in the assistant's catalogue.

Plan mode

The approval gate for multi-step chat work. The assistant writes a prose plan first; you approve, modify, or abort before any tool runs.

Project

An organisational grouping inside a workspace — a study, a campaign. No permission effects.

Provenance

The server-recorded lineage of every artefact — which runs read and wrote which versions, captured at the moment each change is enforced. Walkable as origin (backward) or impact (forward).

Result

A measurement row in a result table.

Result batch

A recording session. All results that were captured together (one ELISA run, one cytometry experiment) belong to one batch.

Run

One recorded activity in the provenance graph — an import, a data pull, a code execution, a document edit. Recorded in the same transaction as the change itself.

S — Z

SKU

Stock Keeping Unit. An inventory item's display ID, minted by its item type's display pattern the same way a naming scheme mints a sample ID.

Scope

The npm-style namespace on dalea.market. Personal scopes match your handle; org scopes match your organisation slug.

Skill

A short markdown primer the in-app assistant loads on demand. Three scopes: built-in (ships with the platform), workspace (admin-authored, shared), personal (yours).

Slash menu

The block insertion menu. Type "/" inside the editor to open it.

Standard curve

In an immunoassay, the dose-response curve fit to known concentrations of analyte. Dalea stores the plate readings; the fit itself is user-written code in a Python block.

Template

A document blueprint with optional locking. Reusable inside a workspace or publishable to the marketplace.

Tier

The billing/feature class of an organisation. Free, Pro 5, Pro 10, Academic, Enterprise.

Trail

The rendered provenance walk for one entity — its hops, agents, plans, and quality/precision badges. Exportable as a Trail report, PROV-JSONLD, BioCompute Object, and other audit formats.

Verified / declared

The quality grades on a provenance edge. Verified: a server observed it directly. Declared: recorded from a producer's own statement. Inferred: derived from surrounding evidence. Never collapsed into one.

Vision-capable model

A chat model that accepts image input alongside text. Required for drag-drop / paste of screenshots and instrument captures into the chat.

Workspace

The data boundary and collaboration unit inside an organisation.

Workspace skill

A skill authored by a workspace admin (anyone with MANAGE_AI_SKILLS) and visible to every workspace member.

Real-time sync

The mechanism that lets multiple users edit the same document simultaneously without merge conflicts. Surfaced in the UI as live cursors and presence indicators.