Terminology

The words Collie uses, in plain words. Each entry is short and links to the page that covers it. Where another tool uses a different word for the same thing, the entry says so.

Collie (an instance)

One running bridge process. It serves one phone URL and watches one terminal, and it can show durable agents beside it. A host can run more than one, each with its own port and state folder (Multiple Collie instances on one host).

Session

One agent conversation. A pane shows it, and Chat reads it from the harness (Sessions). tmux and zellij call their own top-level group a session too. Collie shows that group as a space.

Space

A group of tabs, with a folder. It is the top level on the phone. A Herdr workspace is a space, a tmux session is a space, a zellij session is a space, and a durable agent is a space.

Tab

A group of panes. A Herdr tab is a tab, and a tmux window is a tab (Terminals).

Pane

One thing you can open on the phone. In a terminal it is a pane with a screen. In a durable agent it is one conversation, and it opens in Chat only.

Terminal (mux)

Herdr, tmux, zellij, tuios or Tern, the program that holds your shells and agents. Other tools call it a multiplexer, or a mux. You choose it with COLLIE_MUX (Terminals).

Durable agent

An agent that runs as its own process, with its own storage. It attaches to Collie over the durable wire. You build one with the Durable SDK, or with any program that serves the wire. It lays out its own spaces, tabs and panes. It is experimental, and you attach it with collie durable attach (Durable agents). A session is either a terminal session or a durable session. The API and the code still call the channel program.

Harness

The agent that runs in a pane: Claude Code, Codex, pi, OmO, or a durable agent (Claude Code on your phone).

Crew

The lead plus its members. It gives you one phone URL for many machines (Crews). One machine needs no crew to show a terminal and a durable agent together.

Lead

The Collie your phone talks to. It merges the lists of its members and relays their panes (Crews).

Member (peer)

One Collie that joined a crew. The two words mean the same thing. "Member" is the crew's word, and "peer" is the word for a Collie that runs beside another one (Crews).

Question card (ask)

A question that a durable agent raises. The phone shows it as a card, and one tap answers it once. Collie never answers for you (Durable agents).

Belt

The action row above the composer. Its harness section holds the harness's own buttons (Configure).

Starter

A row on the New page that makes a new pane in a durable agent (Starters from a durable agent).

Source

The word sources.json uses for one durable agent entry. You meet it only in that file name and its fields. Nothing on the phone says "source"; the phone says durable agent (Attach a durable agent).

Cap

One thing a durable agent says it can do: asks, starters, send, steer, abort, rename, close, actions, history or reopen. The phone draws a control only for a cap the durable agent named. The push limits are also called caps, and they are a different thing (Pushes from a durable agent).

Hello

The first thing a durable agent tells Collie: the wire versions it speaks, its caps and its name. Collie reads nothing more from a durable agent whose versions do not meet its own (Versions). A crew link has a hello of its own, between a lead and a member (Crews).

Epoch

A label a durable agent makes each time it starts. A position in a conversation only counts inside one epoch. When the epoch changes, Collie reads the conversation again from the start (Durable agents).

Receipt

The record of one thing a phone asked a durable agent to do: an answer, a send, a stop or a starter tap. It holds the request id and the outcome, and it lets a retry replay and not run twice. Collie keeps receipts in its state folder (Where Collie keeps a durable agent's data).

Conversation

How the phone's Durable agents pages name a durable session. The conversation list shows what waits on you first, then the other open ones, then the closed ones (What the phone shows).

Durable agents section

The group on the dashboard that lists every durable agent, one row each. It moves above your spaces while a question waits, and it shows nothing when no durable agent is attached (What the phone shows).

Wire

The rules Collie and a durable agent use to talk: a hello, then snapshots, events and answers. There is one version today, version 1. It runs over a private socket or over https with a token (Versions).