Glossary

Plain meaning first. Where a term has an exact definition in Waffle’s own vocabulary, that follows.

Getting set up

First Deployment — going from nothing to a working Waffle. What waffle setup does.

Managed Setup — the default: Waffle owns her own internal credentials and plumbing, and only asks you for things she genuinely cannot generate, like a model provider key.

Installed — she exists: binary, state directory, commands. But she has no validated model to think with, so she cannot answer. Not a broken state, just an unfinished one.

Ready — Installed, plus a working model that has been checked and selected. This is the state you want.

Operator Override — you taking control of exactly one decision that Managed Setup would otherwise make, without switching everything else to manual.

Models and providers

Provider Connection — one configured way of reaching a model service: Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, a local Ollama. You can have several.

Model Alias — a short local name for one specific model, reached through one Provider Connection. You register these; /model only offers what you have registered, which is why you cannot type an arbitrary model name at it.

How she is allowed to behave

Agent Group — the ceiling. Which tools exist at all, which sandbox applies, what the network policy is.

Agent Profile — a named setup within that ceiling: a system prompt, a model, a set of tools. A profile can be more restrictive than its group. It can never be less. main is the interactive one; others exist for scheduled and unattended work.

Policy rule — one line that allows, denies, or asks before a particular action. Anything no rule permits is refused.

Deny by default — the governing principle. Absence of permission is refusal, not permission.

Where work happens

Sandbox — a container her tools can run in instead of running directly on your machine. Sees only the files you gave it; no network unless you listed specific hosts.

Broker — the part that stays on your machine and holds the real credentials. The sandbox asks it to do things rather than being handed the secret. It issues short-lived tokens that expire after a day.

Workspace — a checked-out code repository she has been given to work in, with its own container.

Egress — what a sandbox may reach on the network. none by default; allowlist for named hosts; full if you really mean it.

Remembering

Session — one conversation. Searchable afterwards; resumable.

Working set — goals and constraints held for the current task only. Deliberately temporary.

Durable notes — permanent memory. The only kind she carries into a new conversation.

Write gate — what happens when she wants to write a durable note: write it (auto), write and tell you (notify), or wait for your approval (review). Anything derived from untrusted content is queued regardless.

Candidate — a durable write or proposed skill waiting for your decision. waffle candidates list.

Extending her

Skill — a written instruction she can reuse, stored as a SKILL.md file. Ones you write are active immediately; ones she proposes are not.

Subagent — a fresh, separate context she spawns for a self-contained subtask. Not something you invoke; you see it in the transcript. It inherits your restrictions and can never exceed them.

MCP server — an external tool provider she can be connected to. Declared explicitly; never inherits your environment.

Running continuously

waffle serve — the background process that owns scheduled jobs, chat channels, and the browser view. Scheduled work only happens while it runs.

Waffle Desk — the browser view of her state, on your machine only. Off unless you turn it on.

Pairing — binding one of your own accounts on a chat channel to her. Anybody unpaired gets a code and nothing else.

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Nerd corner: How it fits together — the same vocabulary with the mechanisms attached.