---
title: "Glossary"
description: "Every Chickpea term the rest of the documentation uses without stopping to explain, defined in alphabetical order."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.chickpea.co/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Glossary

**Chickpea's vocabulary** is small and fixed: one word for each thing, the same word in Slack, in Admin, and on every page of this site. Where the product interface names something one way and the source code names it another, this page gives the product word and records the code word beside it. It defines the terms the rest of the documentation uses without stopping to explain, in alphabetical order.

The source of truth is the product repository, `github.com/pejmanjohn/chickpea`: the code that implements each thing, and `README.md` for the security wording. Each entry runs to one or two sentences; the section that owns the term carries the full treatment.

## Fixed word choices

Ten words carry a deliberate choice. The left column is the word this documentation uses.

| Word | Not | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Agent | bot, assistant | An Agent is one Chickpea teammate. Lowercase "agent" means a generic AI agent, such as a coding agent. |
| handle | mention name, alias | A handle is a real Slack user group, not a nickname Chickpea invented. |
| channel grant | permission | The stored thing is a grant. Publishing is the verb that creates one. |
| connection | integration | A connection is one authorized account, not a category of software. |
| connector | connection | A connector is the preset, the kind of service. |
| Admin | dashboard, console, admin panel | Admin is the name of the browser application. |
| schedule | routine, cron job | The product word is schedule. `routine` is the code word. |
| deployment | instance, install, server | A deployment is one running copy of Chickpea. |
| Cloudflare, Node | CF, the Node.js lane | These are the two targets. `Worker` names the Cloudflare object itself. |
| coding sandbox | container tier | The optional Cloudflare container. The default execution path is the standard sandbox. |

## Terms

**Admin** is the browser application a deployment serves, where Agents, connections, memory, schedules, and workspace settings are read and changed. Paths into it are written in the form **Settings → Connectors**. Admin is also the name of the middle Chickpea role, defined below under Owner, Admin, and Member.

An **Agent** is one teammate in a Slack workspace: a saved profile with its own instructions, model, memory, connections, repositories, skills, schedules, and channel grants. The capital A separates it from a generic AI agent.

A **channel grant** is the stored record that one Agent may work in one Slack channel. Its status is `pending`, `active`, or `needs_attention`, and publishing an Agent to a channel hands that channel's members everything the Agent can do and reach.

The **Chickpea Agent**, addressed as `@Chickpea`, is the product-owned system Agent that answers general questions, explains how Chickpea works, and administers the workspace. It takes no channel grants, no connections, and no instruction edits, and the name `chickpea` is refused as any other Agent's id, name, or handle.

The **coding sandbox** is an optional Cloudflare container tier that gives an Agent a real checkout, package installation, test runs, and a development server. It requires Workers Paid, and the container application and its Ubuntu-based image live in the Cloudflare account that runs the deployment and may incur costs on it.

A **connection** is one external account an Agent may use: a Zendesk login, a work Gmail inbox, a remote MCP server. Every connection belongs to one Agent for its lifetime, and credentials never enter model context or the tool arguments the model writes.

A **connector** is the preset behind a connection, the kind of service rather than one account of it. Chickpea ships 35 connector presets, plus native API and native MCP for a service without one.

A **deployment** is one running copy of Chickpea, holding every Agent for one Slack workspace, on infrastructure the operator owns. One deployment currently serves one Slack workspace.

**Flue** is the open agent framework from the Astro team, now part of Cloudflare, that supplies the agent runtime: durable sessions, persistent state, subagents, tools, skills, and MCP. Chickpea depends on `@flue/runtime` 2.0.0 and has no agent loop of its own.

A **handle** is an Agent's address in Slack, a Slack user group with zero members such as `@support`. Requested text is normalized and truncated to 80 characters, and because the group has no members, mentioning an Agent notifies no person.

A **lane** is one of the named alternative routes a capability can take: Slack events arrive by the **Add to Slack** lane or the **Use your own Slack app** lane. A connection's credential arrives through Composio, a vendor's hosted MCP server, a direct HTTP API, or native configuration.

A **managed connector** is a connection whose OAuth storage, token refresh, and API execution are held by Composio rather than by the deployment. Thirteen of the 35 presets run this way, through one Composio project key added under **Settings → Connectors**.

The **management MCP** is the OAuth-protected MCP server a deployment publishes at `/mcp`, through which a coding agent administers the workspace. It is one of three front doors to one management service, with the same permissions and approvals as Admin and Slack, and its product scope is `chickpea:workspace`.

**Memory** is the one durable body of facts an Agent keeps, with no channel and no user partition, capped at 8 KiB. Memory is advisory, never policy.

A **model pin** is the single model specifier saved on one Agent, written as a provider id and a model id joined by a slash, such as `cloudflare/@cf/zai-org/glm-5.2`. An Agent with no pin follows the workspace default model.

**Owner, Admin, and Member** are the three Chickpea roles. Owners manage members and operational configuration, Admins manage operational configuration, and Members have neither; Slack workspace roles grant no Chickpea permissions.

A **personal account** is a connection that belongs to one member inside one Agent, such as that member's work Gmail. Runtime use requires both that Agent's connection and that member's identity, so another member's personal account is never in the room.

**Pi** is the open agent harness Flue runs on, also behind OpenClaw, and the layer that supplies the model providers. Chickpea depends on it as `@earendil-works/pi-ai` 0.83.0.

A **proposal** is a frozen, read-only preview of a change, and nothing applies until it is approved. Two kinds of change arrive this way: anything an Agent inferred rather than was told, and anything that changes what an Agent can do, reach, or delete.

A **provider**, in full a model provider, is the service that runs the model behind an Agent's replies: Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or Cloudflare Workers AI. Keys live in environment variables or in **Settings → Model providers**, and a Cloudflare deployment can use the keyless Workers AI binding instead of a key.

**Publish** is the verb for giving an Agent a channel grant. Publishing to a public channel joins the bot automatically, and a private channel needs someone to `/invite @Chickpea` first. An editor may publish only to a channel they belong to.

A **repository grant** is one GitHub repository, or one whole App installation, that a single Agent may read and change through the Chickpea GitHub App. Access uses short-lived installation tokens scoped to the granted repositories; there is no personal access token lane.

A **schedule** is unattended work an Agent runs later, once at a stated time or on a repeating cadence, delivered to a granted channel or a private DM thread. The code and the operations runbook call the same object a `routine`.

A **setup link** is a private one-use URL bound to one frozen action and target, used for first-run setup and for credential steps that must not pass through Slack. It stops verifying 24 hours after it is minted, with 5 minutes of clock-skew tolerance.

The **shared gateway** is the Chickpea-operated service between Slack and a deployment in the **Add to Slack** lane, which is what removes the need to configure a Slack app. It stores encrypted installation credentials and sanitized health metadata, but does not durably store Slack message or event bodies.

A **skill** is one repeatable procedure stored on a single Agent: a name, a description, and the instructions to follow when work of that kind arrives. Skills use the Agent Skills format, `SKILL.md`, and are imported from a GitHub repository or a `skills.sh` link.

A **starter teammate** is one of the five day-one Agents `@Chickpea` offers when someone asks what to create first: `@editor`, `@notes`, `@buddy`, `@brief`, and `@planner`. Each one is direct-message first, needs no connected account and no schedule, and is created with the catalog name, handle, and instructions as soon as the requester picks it. A fresh install seeds no Agent of its own, so a starter is usually the first Agent in the list.

A **target** is the runtime a deployment runs on, either Cloudflare or Node, chosen at runtime rather than at build time from one source tree. Node runs no scheduler and has no coding sandbox.

A **team account** is a connection held as shared authority that the Agent's editors manage, such as the support team's Zendesk. Any member taking a turn with that Agent may use it, which is what separates it from a personal account.

Source: https://docs.chickpea.co/reference/glossary/index.mdx