Glossary

Terms used across Pendraic. If you hear a word in the app or docs you don't recognize, this is where to look.

Act: Top-level grouping in the manuscript spine (Standard / Heavy presets). Holds chapters; carries craft fields.
Anchors: The sixth PENDRAIC layer. Voice profile, register, diction, rhythm, tone, taboos, reference authors. Enforced on every AI generation.
Architect view: Drag-and-drop board for restructuring acts, chapters, and scenes. Sibling to Compose mode in the workspace.
Atelier: Pendraic's typed, composable, validated, reversible execution runtime for LLM-assisted writing. Six primitives: Operation, Pipeline, Binder, Ward, Overlay, Change. Sits orthogonal to the eight PENDRAIC layers, every AI-touching subsystem runs on it.
Beat: Structural waypoint anchored to a scene. Carries a framework role (rising-action, midpoint, climax, etc.). Visible in Standard / Heavy presets.
Beat Map: The right-rail panel that shows the previous, current, and next beat relative to the active scene.
BYOK: Bring your own key. Add an API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, or OpenRouter and AI calls run on your account, billed by the vendor. Prefer not to manage keys? Use Pendraic Managed AI instead and top up a credit wallet.
Closure: The eighth PENDRAIC layer. The ledger of finalized decisions; what's locked vs. still open.
Compose: Default workspace view, three-column writing surface (outline / editor / dock).
Custom prompt: A writer-saved prompt body with optional /prompt:<shortcut>. Lives in the writer's library; runs through the inline AI palette.
Discovery preset: Structure preset that hides acts and beats but exposes a +Beat summon affordance in the prose toolbar.
Dispatcher: Penny's name for a structured tool. Each dispatcher (project, manuscript, story_index, world_index, etc.) has multiple ops.
Domain: A category an entry lives in within the World Index. Defaults: Locations, Cultures, Magic, Technology, Factions, Concepts.
Dynamics: The fourth PENDRAIC layer. Per-scene goal / obstacle / outcome / shift.
Engine: The second PENDRAIC layer. Structural framework, three-act, hero's journey, save the cat, snowflake, etc. Stored as a sequence of beats with semantic roles.
Failover chain: Pendraic's 4-slot ladder for AI calls: primary + 3 backups. The runtime walks past failures (rate limits, quota exhaustion, provider outages) so the writer keeps moving.
Heavy preset: Structure preset that surfaces every level (acts, chapters, scenes, beats) with the Beat panel pinned to the right rail by default.
Highlight overlay: In-editor color decoration on Story Index and World Index entry names. Stays anchored cleanly across edits so highlights never lag behind your typing.
Iterations: The seventh PENDRAIC layer. Revision passes with findings; lets you compare drafts and know which is canon.
Managed AI: Pendraic Managed AI. A pre-paid credit wallet that powers AI features without you adding a provider key. Top up from Billing; usage draws down the wallet.
MCP: Model Context Protocol. An external tool integration standard. Pendraic exposes its dispatcher tools as an MCP server so external AI clients can read and write the manuscript.
Nexus: The third PENDRAIC layer. Thematic spine, weighted, typed claims about what your book is arguing.
Optimizer: AI pass that compresses a custom prompt body under PENDRAIC's five rules. Returns the rewrite plus a one-line rationale; the writer accepts or discards.
Pen name: Workspace-scoped author identity. Attaches to projects / series / worlds; resolves through the byline cascade (project → series → workspace default).
PENDRAIC: Pendraic's eight-layer model: Promise, Engine, Nexus, Dynamics, Registry, Anchors, Iterations, Closure. The Atelier is the orthogonal runtime; it is not a ninth layer.
Penny: Pendraic's in-app chat assistant. Floats in a corner dock; binds to the active project + scene; runs structured dispatcher tools.
Project: One manuscript. Belongs to a bookshelf, optionally to a series, optionally to a world.
Projection: Per-(world entry, project) override. Lets a world morph through a series, the same character can be a godking in book 3 and deposed in book 4 without touching the base entry.
Promise: The first PENDRAIC layer. The reader-compact: genre contract, tonal promise, narrative hooks, style commitments, anything a reader would feel betrayed by if it broke. Stored as structured rows (stakes + type + statement) plus the project's logline, elevator pitch, and synopses.
Registry: The fifth PENDRAIC layer. The coordinator for silo data, Story Index, World Index, and any future silos (Bibliography, Timeline, plugin-contributed). Owns the silo contract, the detection coordinator, the shared tag vocabulary, and the bundle composer. Not the same thing as Story Index or World Index; those are silos that implement Registry's contract.
Resonance (project): Per-project emotional-arc metadata: intensity curve, tonal commitments, promise-adherence score, narrative temperature, thematic mantra. A feature inside the lattice, not a PENDRAIC layer, Resonance does not name a letter of the acronym.
Series: A group of projects sharing a saga shape, world, or characters. Carries metadata: shape, POV strategy, continuity, audience, planned book count, etc.
Simple preset: Structure preset that hides acts and beats. Just chapters and scenes.
Standard preset: Default structure preset for novels. Acts visible, beats visible.
Story Index: Pendraic's character + entity tracker. Holds entries (characters, factions, locations, objects, concepts) at project / series / universe scope.
Structure preset: A flag on the project that gates which manuscript levels render. Simple / Standard / Discovery / Heavy.
Voice Print: The rendered form of the Anchors layer. The voice contract Pendraic enforces on every AI generation.
Workspace: Your top-level account scope. One per signed-up writer. Owns bookshelves, projects, series, worlds, and pen names.
World: A universe in which one or more projects live. Standalone, you can build a setting before knowing which book it's for.
World Index: Pendraic's structured worldbuilding surface. Worlds → domains → entries → rules / belief layers / projections / relationships.