{
  "id": "Colony_Glossary",
  "title": "Colony Glossary",
  "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Colony_Glossary",
  "archive_ref": "QUANTARA-SWARMGLASS-R13-98C818",
  "kind": "article",
  "status": "current",
  "categories": [
    "Reference"
  ],
  "created": "2010-06-30",
  "modified": "2015-07-07",
  "revisions": 28,
  "authors": [
    "dlopes",
    "mkerrigan",
    "jbrandt"
  ],
  "infobox": {
    "Terms": "24",
    "Theme": "ants (blame dlopes)"
  },
  "summary": "Vocabulary used across the  documentation. The ant metaphor was a joke in the first design review that stuck because every alternative was worse.",
  "links": [
    {
      "target": "Worker_Node_Registry",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Worker_Node_Registry"
    },
    {
      "target": "Agent_Message_Bus",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Agent_Message_Bus"
    },
    {
      "target": "Memory_Synchronization",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Memory_Synchronization"
    },
    {
      "target": "Tool_Registry",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Tool_Registry"
    },
    {
      "target": "Task_Graph_Format",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Task_Graph_Format"
    },
    {
      "target": "Incident_2013-07_Queen_Split",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Incident_2013-07_Queen_Split"
    },
    {
      "target": "Incident_2015-02_Memory_Desync",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Incident_2015-02_Memory_Desync"
    },
    {
      "target": "Distributed_Inference_Notes",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Distributed_Inference_Notes"
    },
    {
      "target": "Getting_Started",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Getting_Started"
    },
    {
      "target": "Internal_Agent_Communication_Protocol",
      "url": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Internal_Agent_Communication_Protocol"
    }
  ],
  "alternates": [
    "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Colony_Glossary.json",
    "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Colony_Glossary.txt"
  ],
  "text": "Vocabulary used across the ANTFARM documentation. The ant metaphor was a joke in the first design review that stuck because every alternative was worse.\n\n; Colony : one deployment of ANTFARM: queens, foragers, bus, memory. HSC ran one production colony and one test colony (`queen02`).\n; Queen : the orchestrator process, `queend`. Assigns work, owns the node registry, applies memory writes. Two queen hosts, one leader.\n; Forager : a worker agent process, `forager-agent`. Executes task-graph nodes by calling tools.\n; Trail : a pub/sub topic on the phero bus.\n; Phero : the message bus. From pheromone.\n; Colony memory : the shared key/value store, `cm://` keys. See Memory Synchronization.\n; cmsync : the memory synchronisation service between queens.\n; toolreg : the Tool Registry.\n; Manifest : the list of tools toolreg serves to a forager.\n; Task graph : a DAG of tool calls in a `.tg` file. See Task Graph Format.\n; Bundle : a compiled task graph, output of `antc build`.\n; Node : one vertex of a task graph, the unit of assignment.\n; Assign : the queen giving a node to a forager (`task.assign`).\n; Epoch : the queen's leadership counter. Increases on every election. Foragers track `epoch_seen`.\n; Split : two queens both believing they lead. See Incident 2013-07 Queen Split.\n; Desync : colony memory disagreeing between queens. See Incident 2015-02 Memory Desync.\n; Drain : `ctl.drain`, finish current work and take no more.\n; Halt : `ctl.halt`, stop now.\n; Resync : a forager rebuilding its view of the bus and memory after a gap.\n; Shard : one piece of a split model in the inference fabric.\n; Warmup : the period after a shard host restarts before its inference cache is useful.\n; Slot : concurrent task capacity of a forager.\n; Stamp : the vector clock on a colony memory value.\n; Replay log : the bus's per-trail buffer that lets subscribers catch up.\n\nMissing a term? It used to be fine to add it here. It is not anymore; the mirror is read-only.\n\n== See also ==\n\n- Getting Started\n- Internal Agent Communication Protocol\n",
  "history": "https://swarmglass.quantara.cv/wiki/Colony_Glossary?action=history",
  "latest_revision": 44711,
  "mirror": {
    "source": "ANTFARM Wiki",
    "seed_version": "2026.09.0",
    "generator": "AntWiki 1.16.5 (swarmglass mirror)"
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}