--- url: https://weboost-at.github.io/Typeshift/guide/glossary.md description: The words these docs use and what exactly they mean in Typeshift. --- # Glossary Typeshift reuses Microsoft.Extensions.AI's words wherever it can: a run returns a `ChatResponse`, and an `IChatClient` serves a model. The terms below are Typeshift's own, or mean something narrower here. | Term | Meaning | |---|---| | **Agent** | A `partial` class deriving from `Agent` that bundles chat options, instructions, tools and their settings for one job. See [Agents](./defining-agents.md). | | **Agent host** | `AgentHost`, which runs one agent with the services of the scope it was resolved from. See [Using an agent](./using-an-agent.md). | | **Approval request** | The `ToolApprovalRequestContent` a run ends with when it needs approval. You answer it in the conversation's next run. See [Approval and modes](./tool-approval.md). | | **Approval rule** | An `IToolApprovalRule` that approves, rejects or abstains on a tool call before your app is asked. | | **Chat client provider** | The `IChatClientProvider` your app registers with `WithChatClientProvider()`, which returns the `IChatClient` for a provider and a model. | | **Code defaults** | The values a settings record's parameterless constructor sets, the lowest [layer](./settings-and-stores.md#settings-layering). | | **Compaction** | Shrinking the history a model call sees once it nears a token limit. See [Compaction](./conversations.md#compaction). | | **Configurable** | A settings member or an option that stored settings or a run may change, marked in code with `Configurable(...)` or `WithConfigurableSettings()`. Everything else keeps the value the code sets. | | **Context provider** | An `IContextProvider` that adds instructions, messages or tools to every run of the agents that use it. | | **Conversation** | The entries a run stores under a conversation id: inputs, model responses, tool results and run endings. See [Conversations](./conversations.md). | | **Declaration** | The chain of calls in a toolset's or agent's constructor, such as `AddTool(...).ReadOnly()`. The generator reads it at compile time, and at runtime it only records values. | | **Diagnostic** | A `TSHnnn` error or warning the analyzer reports for a mistake in a toolset, an agent or the setup. See [Diagnostics](./diagnostics.md). | | **Generated member** | A member the source generator writes into or next to your toolsets and agents. See [Generated members](./generated-members.md). | | **Handoff** | A tool, `handoff_to_{name}`, declared with `UseHandoff()`, that hands the conversation to another agent. See [Multiple agents](./multi-agent.md#handoff). | | **Host** | Short for agent host, `AgentHost`. The application that uses Typeshift is "your app". | | **Id type** | The type of every settings id and conversation id in a build: `Guid` unless `TypeshiftIdType` names another. | | **Kind** | The stable name a store keeps a document under. An agent's settings kind is its class name, or the name `WithStorageKind("...")` sets. | | **Layer** | One source of settings: the code defaults, the agent's code, the stored settings or the run. A higher layer overrides a lower one, and a conversation's mode sits between the stored settings and the run. | | **Middleware** | An `IRunMiddleware` around every run, or an `IToolMiddleware` around every tool call. | | **Mode** | `Default`, `Plan` or `Auto`, which decides what a run offers the model and what happens to tools that require approval. See [The three modes](./tool-approval.md#the-three-modes). | | **Module** | The registration the generator writes for each assembly that declares toolsets or agents. `AddTypeshift()` registers the modules of the project and its references. | | **Overrides** | The generated `{Tool}Overrides` record, a tool's configurable settings with each one nullable. Null keeps the layer below. | | **Provider id type** | The type of every provider id in a build, such as the provider in `WithModel(provider, model)`: `string` unless `TypeshiftProviderIdType` names another. See [Models and providers](./models.md#the-provider-id-type). | | **Raw path** | Resolving a run's options and creating its `IChatClient` yourself, for when your app needs the client. See [Running agents](./running-agents.md#the-raw-path). | | **Run** | One call of `RunAsync`, `RunAsync`, `RunStreamingAsync`, `ResumeAsync`, `ResumeStreamingAsync` or the raw path's client: the model calls and tool calls until the model answers. | | **Run options** | How a run's tool loop goes, with its mode, its limits and compaction. Set with `WithRunOptions()`. | | **Schema version** | The number in a stored document's JSON, `"$schemaVersion"`, that names the shape of the record that wrote it: 1 unless the agent's `WithSchemaVersion(n)` raises it. Reading a newer one fails. See [The stored JSON](./settings-and-stores.md#the-stored-json). | | **Settings** | An agent's generated `Settings` record, with exactly the values that may change at runtime. Stored under a settings id, or passed for one run. | | **Settings id** | The id your app stores an agent's `Settings` under, such as one per customer, team or user. | | **Settings record** | The record a tool receives its settings in, declared with `WithSettings()` or `WithConfigurableSettings()`. The model never sees it. | | **Stamp** | A hidden attribute the generator writes so that other assemblies can read a toolset's tools or a project's module. | | **Standing approval** | An approval for every later call of a tool in a conversation, given with `ApproveForConversation()`. | | **Steering** | Input a user sends while a run works, which you hand to that run with `ConversationTracker.TrySteer`. See [Steering](./conversations.md#steering). | | **Store** | What your app registers with `WithStore()` to keep settings (`ISettingsStore`), conversations (`IConversationStore`) or both (`ITypeshiftStore`). See [Settings and stores](./settings-and-stores.md). | | **Sub-agent** | Another agent offered as a tool with `UseAgent()`. It works in a context of its own and answers with text. | | **Tool** | A static method that a toolset or an agent declares with `AddTool`, offered to the model as a generated `AIFunction`. | | **Tool list** | `ToolList`, the type `Include` and `Exclude` pick tools from. The generated `{Toolset}ToolList` gives it one property per tool. | | **Toolset** | A `partial` class deriving from `Toolset` that declares the tools of one domain. See [Toolsets](./toolsets.md). | | **Version** | The number that marks a stored document's current state; each save gives the document a new one. A save passes the version it loaded, so it fails when another save came first. Not the schema version. See [Save with a version](./implementing-a-store.md#save-with-a-version). | ## Related * [Getting started](./getting-started.md#how-the-pieces-fit): how the pieces fit together. * [Writing style](../contributing/writing.md): for contributors, how these docs use the terms above.