Shadow Lexicon

The terms Shadow uses in CLI output, panels, PR comments, briefs, and documentation. Use this page as a reference when reading Shadow's output or contributing changes.

Calls

A call is Shadow's ship-readiness decision for a diff. Four tiers, each a single syllable so the call reads cleanly at a glance.

Term	Meaning
ship	The candidate is safe to merge. No regression detected.
hold	A moderate signal warrants review before merging.
probe	Insufficient data for a definitive call; record more pairs.
stop	A severe regression was detected; do not merge.

Confidence

Confidence labels accompany numerical claims. They reflect the bootstrap CI relative to zero and the noise floor.

Term	Meaning
firm	The CI excludes zero and the effect is comfortably above noise.
fair	The CI excludes zero but the effect is near the noise floor.
faint	The CI crosses zero; treat the signal as directional.

Artifacts

Shadow produces and consumes content-addressed artifacts. Every artifact has a SHA-256 trace id and an immutable identity.

Term	Meaning
anchor	The baseline trace — the known-good reference.
candidate	The trace under review.
artifact	Any content-addressed Shadow output (trace, diff, policy, cert).
trace id	A short prefix of the SHA-256 content hash, used for navigation.
driver	The change attributed as the dominant cause of a regression.
trail	The causal chain walking from a regressed trace back to its cause.
ledger	The append-only record of artifacts produced by Shadow.
bundle	A grouped set of artifacts (e.g. a release's traces + cert).

Workflow surface

Term	Meaning
call	A ship / hold / probe / stop decision derived from a diff.
brief	A broadcast post summarising recent state.
holdout	An artifact set excluded from CI gating.
listen	A long-running file-save trigger that emits ledger entries.
rebound	An auto-recovery action — retry, propose variant, or escalate.