Glossary

This glossary defines nax terms as they are used in the CLI, workflow files, dashboard, and artifacts. Some terms overlap with Netlify or GitHub vocabulary, but the definitions here focus on how the nax codebase and user workflow use them.

Agent provider

The execution provider selected by agent or agents: claude, codex, gemini, or opencode.

Agent instance

One execution tuple: provider, optional model, and optional effort. Every instance creates one Agent Runner run. A step may contain several instances of the same provider.

Instance id

The stable tuple key provider:model:effort, with auto for omitted fields, for example claude:claude-opus-5:high or codex:auto:auto. Display labels are not part of identity.

Lineup

The ordered set of instances assigned to a step. Plural models and efforts fan out into a cartesian lineup.

Fan-out

Expansion of one lineup declaration into independent instances. Model bake-offs and effort sweeps are both fan-out shapes.

Lineage

The (sourceStepId, instanceId) link used to continue the correct runner session in a follow-up step.

Model alias

latest or default, resolved to a provider’s configured default model when a fresh run launches. Retry and resume reuse the recorded concrete model.

Model

A real provider-specific model ID, such as claude-opus-4-8, gpt-5.6-sol, or z-ai/glm-5.2. Models do not select providers.

Effort

An optional reasoning level for a pinned model. Auto is a NAX selection that omits the field rather than a value sent to Agent Runner.

Agent Runner

The Netlify-hosted execution environment that runs an agent against a repository and prompt.

Artifact

A persisted local output under .nax/, such as a workflow summary, runner summary, session summary, event log, or prompt blob mirror.

Council pattern

A workflow shape where multiple agent providers first inspect the same task independently, then cross-review the findings before a final synthesis step prepares a human-readable artifact.

Flow

The workflow definition loaded from flow.yml, flow.json, flow.toml, flow.js, or flow.ts.

Handoff

The process of selecting an existing artifact and copying, opening, or feeding it into a new agent or workflow.

Project-local workflow

A workflow defined by the current project, usually under .github/nax-flows/.

Prompt offload

The mechanism that stores oversized prompt content in Netlify Blobs and submits a smaller fetch wrapper to the runner.

Runner

A Netlify Agent Runner thread. Follow-up submissions can continue an existing runner context.

Session

One concrete agent result within a runner.

Step

One ordered unit inside a flow. A step can submit issues, comments, follow-ups, or a human review gate.

Completed with failures

A terminal step state where at least one instance succeeded and at least one exhausted its retry budget. Surviving instances may continue downstream. If all instances fail, the step fails and the workflow halts.

Transport

The submission path for a run. github-actions dispatches a hosted GitHub workflow. netlify-api submits directly from the local machine.

Workflow run

One execution of a flow, persisted under .nax/workflows/<workflow-run-id>/.