Glossary

These are the words hlix uses, and what each one means. One word for each idea, the same word in the dashboard, the CLI, the SDKs, the API and these docs — never a second name for the same thing.

Work

Word	What it means
Workspace	Your organization in hlix: your people, your projects, shared knowledge and billing. Everything else here lives inside one Workspace. Learn about Workspaces.
Project	One product, client engagement or initiative with a shared goal. A project has a project manager, its own repositories, its plan and its settings.
Cycle	A group of related tasks delivered on one branch by one build agent. Independent cycles run in parallel. Work with cycles.
Task	One item on a cycle’s checklist: a feature, a fix or a documentation change. The build agent ticks it off as it works, and an accepted task is what hlix bills. Work with tasks.

The project’s setup and its Cloud Machines

Word	What it means
Project Environment	The project’s ready setup: its code, installed packages and tools, on disk. Every Cloud Machine starts as a copy of it, so work begins with the project already set up. Project environments.
Cloud Machine	One container that runs your project’s code and tools. A cycle run, a review, a build, a terminal you open and a running preview each get their own, and it ends when that work does. Your Workspace organizes people and projects; Cloud Machines run the work. Explore Cloud Machines.
Desktop	The screen of a Cloud Machine. Open it to watch the work, or take control with your own mouse and keyboard.

Agents

Word	What it means
agent	One member of the team hlix runs: a model, the tools it may use, and the rules for its kind of job.
project manager	The agent that runs a project. It triages what comes in, plans the work, assigns a build agent to each cycle, keeps the plan current, decides what to do with the results and brings finished cycles together on the preview. Meet the agent team.
plan agent	The agent that turns a request into cycles and tasks, and writes the plan they follow.
build agent	The agent that builds a cycle: it implements the cycle and works through its task checklist on the cycle’s branch until the work is ready for review. The work shapes the role it takes: interface work, testing or technical writing. Agent roles.
review agent	The agent that reviews a cycle before merge and records findings. A finding that needs work goes back on the build agent’s checklist, with the reason. How review works.
setup agent	The agent that prepares a project’s environment: it reads the code, finds the packages and tools the project needs, and gets it ready to build in.
assistant	The agent in a chat that belongs to no project. It answers questions about your Workspace and helps you decide what comes next.
coder	The program the build agent uses to work with your code. Hlix Code is the default, and a project can connect another coder instead. Choose a coder.

Work in motion

Word	What it means
run	One agent doing work on a cycle. A cycle can have several runs, and each continues from the branch the last one pushed.
job	Work a Cloud Machine does with no agent in it, such as a build, a check or a publish.
stage	One of the five parts of a cycle, in this order: triage, plan, build, review, merge.
request	Something that comes in and wants work done: from you, from a client, or from a tool you connected.
source	Where a request came from: the web chat, the board, GitHub, Linear, the API, Telegram or a client portal.
triage	What the project manager does with a request first: it assesses the request — whether it overlaps existing work, depends on another change or should become a new cycle — and decides what happens to it. Triage is also the first stage of a cycle. How requests enter a project.

Decisions and conversation

Word	What it means
proposal	The planned scope and statement of work for a new project, as one document your agency can read and change. A project waits for the agency to approve it only when that project turned proposal review on. A proposal is a document, never a request. Review a proposal.
message	Anything you say to a running agent. A message has one of three modes: wait (the agent reads it after the current step), now (it arrives in the running step), or stop first (the agent stops, then reads it).
approval	A yes or no an agent asks a person for before it goes on. A question or decision an agent asks you to resolve — clarifying a requirement, approving a tool action — is an approval, not a request. Understand requests and approvals.
chat	One conversation, with its own history. A project has a chat with its project manager, and your chats with the assistant are yours alone.

Delivery and what you see

Word	What it means
preview	A private, hosted version of the project built from its preview branch, where your team inspects the work before it reaches production. Review project output.
deploy	A release to the customer’s production system. Only a deploy touches production.
activity	The updates a page shows while work runs: what each agent just did, in order.
stopped	A person pressed Stop. Nothing works until someone presses Resume, and nothing is lost: Resume continues where it stopped. A single cycle can be stopped too.
paused	hlix holds paid work itself: billing, your monthly usage limit, a spending cap or the agency’s review. It continues by itself when the hold lifts.

More terms

The vocabulary above is the whole map of how hlix works. The terms below come up across the docs and the dashboard: how a project is planned, where the code lives, what an agent can use, and what you pay for.

Planning and delivery

Word	What it means
Roadmap	The project’s plan of cycles and dependencies. The project manager updates it as work progresses. How planning works.
Brief	Your description of the outcome you want. The project manager uses it to plan the work. Start with a brief.
Verification	The build, test or other checks configured for a repository. Results show which checks passed, failed or were skipped. Configure verification.
Cycle branch	The Git branch where a cycle’s build agent saves changes. Review and further runs continue from that branch. Branches and previews.
Preview branch	The branch that collects a project’s reviewed changes before the final merge into the repository’s default branch. Branches and previews · Configure the names under Branch prefix.
Final merge	Your approval to merge the project’s preview pull request into a repository’s default branch. This is separate from proposal approval. Review and merge.
Retry	Another attempt to complete a cycle, using its branch and the previous failure or review findings as context. Cycles.

Coders, repositories and secrets

Word	What it means
Hlix Code	Hlix’s built-in coder. Use it for cloud delivery or run it in your terminal. Use Hlix Code.
Repository	The Git repository that stores your project’s code and history. Connect a GitHub repository or use HLIX Repos. Manage repositories.
HLIX Repos	The managed Git repositories hlix provides for projects. The CLI can import a local folder and synchronize its files with HLIX Repos. Bring an existing project.
Commit	A saved version of source files in Git, identified by a commit SHA. The CLI uses the last synchronized commit to detect local and remote changes. Push, pull, and sync.
Sync	Keeping a bound local folder and its HLIX Repos repository up to date. If both sides changed, the CLI reports a conflict for you to resolve. Push, pull, and sync.
Secret	A sensitive configuration value, such as an API key or database password. hlix stores secrets encrypted and makes them available to authorized jobs. Manage secrets.
Protected file	A file containing sensitive configuration or credentials, such as a .env file. hlix handles it separately from ordinary source files. Secrets and protected files.

Knowledge and connected tools

Word	What it means
Memory	Saved knowledge that agents can retrieve when it is relevant to a project or Workspace. Manage memories.
Skill	Reusable instructions that teach an agent how to handle a particular task or tool. Packs and skills.
Pack	A collection of skills made available together. Packs and skills.
MCP server	A connection that lets an AI agent use external tools through the Model Context Protocol. Add MCP servers to a project to give its agents tools, or connect your own assistant to the hosted hlix MCP server. Project MCP connections · Connect your assistant to hlix.
Integration	A connection between hlix and a service your team uses, such as GitHub, Linear, Slack or Telegram. Connect your tools.

Clients and access

Word	What it means
Client account	The customer record in your Workspace, used to organize that customer’s projects, contacts and invoicing details. Manage client accounts.
Client portal	The branded space where customers see projects and deliverables you share with them. Their access depends on the permissions you grant. Set up a client portal.
Deliverable	The client-facing view of a cycle’s work. You choose what to publish and which version your client sees. Share deliverables.

Billing and limits

Word	What it means
Subscription plan	Your Workspace’s Free, Pro, Business or Scale subscription. It sets your included allowance and plan limits. Compare plans.
Hlix Dollars (H$)	The unit used for task quotes, balances and estimates. H$1 = US$1. Understand usage.
Accepted task	A task whose completed work has met its delivery acceptance checks. Accepted tasks are billable according to their quote and your plan. Task prices and acceptance.
Extra usage	Usage beyond a paid plan’s available Hlix Dollars, added to the monthly invoice when extra usage is enabled and the monthly limit allows it. Balances and extra usage.
Monthly spending limit	The cap your Workspace sets on spending during a month. Set spending limits.
Project budget	The spending cap for an individual project. It applies to the project’s total spend rather than resetting each month. Set project limits.

Need the exact field name, accepted value or command flag? Use the API reference or the CLI reference.