Glossary
Key terms used throughout the Akshi documentation.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| A2A | Agent-to-Agent protocol. Enables agents to send tasks and messages to each other, both within a node and across the mesh. |
| AG-UI | Agent-User Interface protocol. Provides real-time streaming of agent state to human-facing dashboards via SSE. |
| Agent Card | A JSON metadata document (/.well-known/agent.json) that describes an agent’s capabilities, endpoints, and authentication requirements. Used for discovery. |
| Automerge | A CRDT library used by the journal sync layer to merge concurrent edits from multiple mesh peers without conflicts. |
| Circuit Breaker | A fault-tolerance pattern in the inference router that stops sending requests to a failing model provider after consecutive errors, re-trying after a cooldown period. |
| CRDT | Conflict-free Replicated Data Type. A data structure that can be merged across distributed nodes without coordination. Akshi journals use CRDTs for mesh sync. |
| DID | Decentralized Identifier. A self-sovereign identity standard used by Akshi agents and nodes for authentication and message signing. |
| Fuel | A unit of WASM execution budget. Each tick grants an agent a fuel allowance; when fuel is exhausted the tick halts. Controls runaway computation. |
| Host Capability | A permission granted to a sandboxed agent (e.g., database.read, http.request). The runtime enforces capabilities at the host-call boundary. |
| Journal | An append-only log maintained per agent. Stores events, findings, and state changes. Journals sync across mesh peers via CRDTs. |
| MCP | Model Context Protocol. An open standard for connecting AI agents to external tool servers. Akshi agents call MCP tools through the host capability layer. |
| Mesh | A peer-to-peer network of Akshi nodes that share journal state and route A2A messages. Built on gossip-based membership with optional WireGuard encryption. |
| Route Profile | A JSON configuration that controls how the inference router scores prompts and selects between model tiers. |
| Sandbox | The WASM isolation boundary that confines agent code. Agents cannot access the filesystem, network, or host memory directly; they must use host capabilities. |
| SSE | Server-Sent Events. A unidirectional streaming protocol used by the dashboard API to push real-time agent events to clients. |
| Supervisor | The runtime component that manages agent lifecycles: loading WASM modules, scheduling ticks, enforcing fuel limits, and restarting failed agents. |
| WASI | WebAssembly System Interface. A set of standardized APIs for WASM modules to interact with system resources. Akshi uses WASI Preview 2. |
| WIT | WebAssembly Interface Type. A schema language for defining typed interfaces between WASM components and their hosts. Akshi’s SDK contract is defined in WIT. |