Glossary and ReferenceIndex

Reference material on this platform serves two different needs: a reader who wants one term defined precisely, and a reader who wants to understand the vocabulary well enough to read everything else in this wiki without stumbling. Both needs live here — general computing concepts defined in plain language, the full platform glossary, orientation for a reader who hasn't picked a starting point yet, and the standards this wiki itself is written to.

Start here: PointSav encyclopedia — glossary and lexicon — the canonical A-to-Z definition of every platform-specific term, the page most other articles link to on first use.

Platform orientation

• Getting started with the PointSav platform — An orientation to the PointSav developer platform: what it is, who it is for, where to start, and how the pieces fit together before the first task.
• PointSav encyclopedia — glossary and lexicon — A canonical A-to-Z lexicon bridging standard industry terminology with PointSav platform concepts, with authoritative definitions across technical and financial domains.
• How this knowledge base is organized — A reader's map of the platform knowledge base: fifteen areas covering what PointSav builds, how it's built, and why it can be trusted, for every reader.
• Developer guide index — Developer guide index for the PointSav platform — task-oriented how-to guides organised by concern, from toolchain setup to session lifecycle.
• Hardware reference — Reference hardware profiles for developer workstations and fleet devices, specifying CPU requirements including Haswell-generation x86_64 and fsgsbase support.
• SLM operationalization plan — The plan for transitioning from externally hosted language model calls toward a per-tenant small language model substrate that heals via a feedback loop.

General computing concepts

• Application programming interface — Defined interface that lets software systems communicate by specifying the available calls, how to make them, and the data formats exchanged.
• Computer appliance — Computing device pairing hardware and software engineered for one well-defined function, deployed as a sealed unit that cannot be repurposed for general computing.
• Edge computing — Distributed computing paradigm that places computation and storage near data sources, cutting latency and bandwidth versus centralized cloud data centers.
• Fog computing — Distributed architecture placing compute, storage, and network services between edge devices and the cloud, defined by Cisco in 2012 and standardized as IEEE 1934-2018.
• Just enough operating system — Operating system philosophy that reduces the OS to the minimum components a specific application needs, shrinking attack surface, memory footprint, and maintenance.
• Lightweight linux distribution — Linux distribution engineered to use far less RAM and processor capacity than full-featured distributions, suited to constrained, embedded, and legacy hardware.
• Virtual appliance — Pre-configured virtual machine image combining a minimal operating system with a specific application, distributed as a self-contained unit for compatible hypervisors.
• Security through obscurity — Reliance on secrecy of design or implementation as a primary security mechanism, rejected in professional practice since Kerckhoffs' principle of 1883.
• User experience design — Multidisciplinary design practice covering every aspect of a user's interaction with a company and its products, coined by Donald Norman at Apple in the early 1990s.
• User interface design — Discipline of designing human-machine interfaces to maximize usability and user experience, governed by the dialogue principles of the ISO 9241 standard.

Editorial and publishing standards

• Editorial language registers — Three distinct language registers matching the PointSav wikis to their audiences: financial-press, developer-platform, and regulatory-specification prose.
• Editorial philosophy — Every article is a learning resource that teaches understanding rather than retrieving facts, structured with encyclopedic leads and internal linking for readers.
• News release typography and layout standards — Strict formatting rules for corporate news syndication: left alignment, title case discipline, geographic precision, and standardized header and dateline structures.
• Preprint notice — What the mandatory preprint notice on every research paper means: a working draft, not yet peer-reviewed, subject to revision, and not a final or authoritative account.
• Root files discipline — The convention that every repository and project sub-clone keeps a small, explicitly enumerated set of canonical companion files at its root — and nothing else.
• Structural positioning — Structural positioning is PointSav's approach to market differentiation: architectural commitments visible in code and topology, not named-competitor comparisons.
• Wiki provider landscape — A structural audit of the wiki-shaped knowledge-surface market by archetype, documenting why no category of provider has closed Wikipedia's encyclopedic gap, and what closing it would require.

For a specific term, go to the glossary directly. Architectural terms are defined with their subject, not listed here.

See also

• Architecture — where architectural terms are defined in context, not just listed
• Core Concepts — the reusable mechanisms this wiki's vocabulary describes
• Platform Tasks — procedural guides that assume this vocabulary