Glossary
The words Knotbind uses.
One list of the capitalized terms across the docs. Two words, Provider and Workflow, mean different things in different parts of Knotbind, and both meanings are given.
People and workspace
| Term | Means |
| Account | A workspace: the company, its members, servers, Checks, keys and records. |
| Owner | The person who approves changes and releases agent actions. An agent, an API key or an MCP tool cannot. |
| Audit Record | The append-only history of Runs, Findings, repairs, approvals and agent actions, with who did each. |
Monitoring
| Term | Means |
| Check | A repeatable test of one tool or endpoint. Suggested by Knotbind, approved by the Owner, then run on a schedule. |
| Run | One execution of Checks, with status, latency and a response preview. |
| Baseline | The shape of an answer the last time it passed. A different shape fails the Check, so a change nobody announced is still caught. |
| Drift | A difference between the current API or tool schema and its Baseline. |
| Finding | A reported problem: opens after two consecutive failures or on Breaking Drift, with a diagnosis. |
| Repair Proposal | A reviewable change drafted for a Finding and verified in the Sandbox before the Owner sees it. |
| Sandbox | A non-production target Checks run against: Knotbind's demo server or your staging API. |
| Reliability Loop | Check, detect, diagnose, propose, approve, resolve. |
Agent actions
| Term | Means |
| Provider (actions) | A business's MCP server an agent can act on, such as a restaurant's booking server. |
| Workflow (actions) | An ordered list of tool calls on one provider, each with a risk class. |
| Risk class | read, quote, reserve, create, pay or cancel. It decides whether a step waits for the Owner. |
| Policy | The Owner's standing permission for one agent and one workflow, with a cap and an expiry. |
| Payment mandate | The Owner's written limit on what one agent may spend. Without one an agent cannot pay. |
| Credential vault | Encrypted upstream credentials. An agent gets the right to run one operation, never the secret. |
| Relay URL | A URL that lets an assistant reach your MCP server through Knotbind, so the connecting assistant can be recorded. |
Other products
| Term | Means |
| Workflow Check (monitoring) | A multi-step Check that calls several tools in order and asserts on the results. Not a write workflow. |
| Provider (Mend) | A third-party API that your code calls, such as Stripe or OpenAI, tracked from its published description. |
| Mend | Opens a draft pull request when a third-party API changes in a way that breaks your code. |
| Gateway | A managed OpenAI-compatible AI gateway with an access key, a monthly budget and a request rate per app. |
| Gateway module | A paid add-on to the Gateway: Semantic Cache, Content Guardrails, Model Failover, Advanced Rate Limits or Request Analytics. |