Glossary

DorkOS docs reuse a handful of terms on purpose. This page defines each one once, so you never have to relearn it on five different pages. Skim it now, or jump back here whenever a word stops making sense.

Agent

An agent is one of the named teammates in your fleet: a coding assistant you have given a face (a name, color, and emoji) and pointed at one of your projects. You talk to it in a session. Each agent runs on a runtime (Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode), but you think in agents, not engines. See What Is DorkOS?.

Agent Identity

An agent identity is the name, color, and emoji DorkOS shows for a project instead of a raw file path. It appears in the sidebar, the tab title, and your task schedules, so you think in agents, not folders. See Agent Identity.

Boundary

A boundary is the folder, and everything inside it, that DorkOS is allowed to read and write. Anything outside it is off limits, no matter what an agent asks for. It defaults to your home directory, and you can set a tighter one with the --boundary flag. See Configuration.

Canvas

The canvas is the space beside your chat where an agent opens images, PDFs, files, and other documents instead of burying them in the conversation. It can hold several documents at once, each in its own tab. See the Workbench guide.

Channel

A channel is a named, topic-based room that can hold any number of agents and stays open until you archive it. Create one from the sidebar's Channels section. This is a DorkOS conversation, not a Telegram or Slack channel: when we mean one of those, we always say the platform's name. See Rooms.

Connection

A connection is a link between your agents and the outside world, set up on the Connections page. It comes in two flavors: a way for people and platforms to reach your agents (like Telegram or Slack), and an account your agents can act on for you (like Gmail or GitHub). The Connections page splits these into Messaging and Accounts for that reason. "Connection" no longer means network health anywhere in DorkOS; for that, see whether your server is reachable in the network status bar. See Connections.

Direct Message

A direct message (DM) is a standing conversation with one agent, or with several at once. Unlike a session, it isn't tied to any one project folder. See Rooms.

DorkBot

DorkBot is the one agent DorkOS creates for itself instead of for one of your projects, so the system has an identity of its own when it needs to send or receive a message. Unlike your own agents, it can't be renamed, blocked, unregistered, or deleted (an agent named DorkBot, because of course it is). See Agent Identity.

DorkOS App

The DorkOS app is the window where you chat with your agents, watch them work, and manage everything else DorkOS does. You open it in your browser after installing DorkOS with one command. The sidebar down the left holds four places: Home, Team, Connections, and Marketplace. Home has its own row of tabs across the top: Home, Activity, Scheduled, and Workspaces. The Home tab is a conversation: your #team channel, with anything waiting on you pinned above it. See What Is DorkOS?.

Extension

An extension is a bundle of code that adds custom UI or automation to DorkOS, built by anyone. It runs in your browser alongside the app and can watch session activity without ever seeing what was actually said inside a session. See Extensions.

Generative UI

Generative UI is how an agent shows you a chart, table, or checklist instead of describing your data in a wall of text. It happens right inside the chat, and the agent decides when a widget helps, so you never have to ask for one. See Generative UI.

Marketplace

The marketplace is DorkOS's catalog of ready-made agents, plugins, skill packs, and adapters you can install with one command. Everything you install runs locally on your machine, under the same permissions as the rest of DorkOS. See Marketplace.

MCP

MCP (the Model Context Protocol) is the standard that lets AI tools talk to each other, so one tool can use another's capabilities without custom glue code. DorkOS both exposes its own tools over MCP and can render interactive MCP apps from other servers inline in chat. See MCP Server.

Mesh

Mesh is how DorkOS finds the AI agents scattered across your projects and gathers them in one place, so they can find and message each other. It scans your folders for signs of an agent project and always asks before adding anything. See Mesh.

Moment

A moment is a short line in your #team channel marking something that really happened, like "tangerines joined your team" or your first overnight run. Every one is read off a record DorkOS already keeps, so nothing in it is guessed at; each lands once and never repeats; and the room marks at most one an hour. A moment is a message in the conversation, not a separate feed. See Rooms.

Persona

Persona is DorkOS's underlying name for an agent's personality: traits like terse or chatty, cautious or bold, plus any custom instructions that turn a generalist into a specialist. In the app today you'll find it under a tab simply called Config. See Shape How Your Agent Behaves.

Relay

Relay is DorkOS's built-in messaging layer, routing messages between your agents, you, and outside platforms like Telegram. It runs by default, so an agent can reach you the moment it finishes a task. See Relay.

Room

Room is DorkOS's umbrella term for channels and direct messages: an ongoing conversation that isn't tied to one project folder the way a session is. See Rooms.

Runtime

A runtime is the engine behind a session: Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode. Every runtime lands in the same session list and uses the same chat and tool approvals, so switching between them doesn't change how you work. See Runtimes.

Scheduled Task

A scheduled task is a skill that runs on a timer, like every Monday at 10am, instead of you kicking it off by hand. Any skill becomes one when you add a schedule: block to it. It fires on its own for as long as the DorkOS server is running, and it never fires until you approve it. See Scheduled tasks.

Session

A session is one conversation with one agent: every message, file change, and reply belongs to it. It survives a page refresh and a second window, so you can pick it back up wherever you left off. See Sessions.

Shape

A Shape is a ready-made setup for your whole workspace that you install from the marketplace. Applying one arranges your panels, turns on the extensions it needs, sets up its recurring tasks, and offers an agent to run them. You can install several and switch between them, and DorkOS only changes your setup when you apply one. See Shapes.

Skill

A skill is a packaged set of instructions that teaches an agent how to do a specific job, like running a security audit or drafting a changelog entry. Your project's own skills show up right alongside built-in commands when you type / in chat. See Slash Commands.

Slash Command

A slash command turns a multi-step task into one word you type, like /help or /compact. Type / in the chat to see every command available: built-in ones, your project's own, and anything you've added yourself. See Slash Commands.

Tool Approval

Tool approval is your checkpoint before an agent runs a command or edits a file. DorkOS pauses, shows you what it wants to do with a color-coded risk level, and waits for you to approve or deny it. See Tool Approval.

Tunnel

A tunnel gives your local DorkOS instance a temporary public web address, so you can check on your agents from your phone or show someone else what you're building. DorkOS uses ngrok to create one, and it only works when DorkOS is running from the command line, not from the Obsidian plugin. See Tunnel Setup.

Widget

A widget is a real, interactive piece of UI (a chart, table, or checklist) that an agent renders inline in chat instead of describing your data in text. You can click its buttons or fill in its form, and DorkOS sends your response back to the agent. See Generative UI.

Workbench

The workbench is the file, terminal, and browser view that opens beside your chat: the deep-dive on everything the canvas can hold. It's where you read, and sometimes edit, the documents an agent opens for you. See the Workbench guide.

Workspace

A workspace is a private folder DorkOS can give a task, so two agents working on different issues never step on each other's files or dev-server ports. Today a workspace is created on request through the API; DorkOS doesn't create them on its own yet. See Workspaces.

Worktree

A worktree is the git mechanism behind most workspaces: a second working copy of your repo that shares history with the original, so DorkOS doesn't have to re-clone your whole codebase for every task. It's the default way DorkOS creates a workspace. See Workspaces.