---
title: "Glossary"
slug: start/glossary
url: https://projectri.com/docs/start/glossary
section: start
audience: everyone
mobile: false
updated: 2026-09-08
source: Projectri documentation
---

# Glossary

Every Projectri word that means something specific, defined once, in alphabetical order.

![Glossary](https://projectri.com/docs-shots/workspace-home.png)

[Core concepts](/docs/start/concepts) covers the eight words you cannot avoid.
This is the rest of them — the terms that appear on a screen, in a permission
name or in a refusal message, and that mean something narrower here than they
do in general use.

## A

**Agent.** A configured, named automation that can act on its own behalf with
its own set of permissions, scope and limits. Agents are listed in a directory
that records what each one may do and what it has done, and any of them can be
stopped.

**Approval.** A step where somebody with a specific permission has to say yes
before something proceeds — expenses, time, purchase orders, vendor bills,
change orders, proofs, documents and stage gates each have their own approval
key.

**Audit log.** The append-only record of everything that changed the workspace.
Every permission key that is not a `.view` writes a row.

## B

**Baseline.** A saved snapshot of a project plan, kept so that later dates can
be compared against what was agreed. Managed under `project.plan`.

**Bench.** How much of the near future is *not* booked. Bench reads bookings
over a forward window; utilisation reads time entries over a past one. They are
different measures of the same firm, which is why the screen names the other
one rather than letting you conflate them.

**Billing run.** Assembling a period's billable work into proposals, reviewing
them, and then issuing the ones you accept as invoices. Assembling and issuing
are separate permissions on purpose.

**Booking.** A commitment of a person's time to a project over a date range,
tentative until somebody confirms it. Bookings are what resourcing, bench and
demand are built from — not time entries.

## C

**Change order.** A priced change raised against a signed contract. It is
approved internally first, then sent to the client.

**Credit note.** A document issued against an already-sent invoice to reduce
it. Drafting one and issuing one are separate permissions.

**Cycle / sprint.** A time-boxed run of work with a goal, a backlog and a
burndown. Starting and completing one is `sprint.run`; changing what is in it
is `sprint.scope`.

## D

**Demand.** Booked and requested future work, viewed as a load on the firm
rather than as a set of projects.

**Device key.** The keypair a browser or phone generates for itself so it can
read encrypted messages. It is per device, never leaves the device, and is
approved by a device you already trust — see
[Linked devices](/docs/account/linked-devices).

**DSAR / data subject request.** A request from a person for a copy of their
data, or for its erasure, with a statutory deadline attached. Handled in the
admin console under `privacy.request.*`.

**Dunning.** The policy for chasing an unpaid invoice, which can be paused and
resumed per client.

## E

**Entitlement.** What your workspace's *plan* includes, as opposed to what your
*role* allows. Free, Team and Business each unlock a different set of feature
keys — see [Plans and entitlements](/docs/features/plans-and-entitlements).

**Envelope.** A conversation key wrapped for one specific device. The server
stores envelopes and can never open one, which is why a new device sees
"waiting for a key" until another device hands it over.

**Estimate.** A priced piece of work before it is offered. An accepted estimate
can be converted into a project; seeing cost and margin on one is its own
permission.

## H

**Handle.** The second segment of every workspace URL — `/acme/anwar/...`. It
is generated from your name the first time it is needed, and the app rewrites a
pasted link to *your* handle rather than the sender's.

## L

**Legal hold.** A block on deletion, placed and released in the admin console,
that suspends retention rules for the data it covers.

**Levelling.** Resolving an over-allocation by rescheduling work. It has its
own screen rather than a button on the timeline, because the answer is a list
of interruptions to other people's plans and each one deserves reading.

**Locus.** An office or location — a branch of the company, with a country, a
city and its own status. The Loci screen is where they are kept.

## M

**MCP.** Model Context Protocol. Projectri both exposes its own MCP server, so
an outside agent can use the product, and can connect *out* to MCP servers you
register — with a call log, per-tool enablement and stored credentials.

**Meter.** A counted limit that comes from the plan rather than from a
permission: seats, active projects, file storage, AI tokens and API calls.
Exceeding one produces a refusal that names the meter.

**Milestone.** A dated marker on a project plan. Managed under `project.plan`
alongside components, branches and baselines.

## O

**Override.** A permission granted or revoked for one individual, on top of
whatever their role gives them. Set on the **By member** tab of the admin
permissions screen.

## P

**Period close.** Freezing a financial period so that its numbers stop moving.
Closing and reopening one is a single permission, `finance.period.close`.

**Playbook.** A reusable sequence of project and task setup that can be run to
create work — used most often for onboarding. Reading the gallery and running a
playbook are different permissions.

**Proof.** A file sent for review, with versions and annotations, that ends in
an approval or a request for changes. A proof can be marked client-visible,
which publishes it to the portal.

**Purchase order.** A commitment of money to a vendor before the bill arrives.
Approving one commits the spend; the vendor's bill is approved separately into
project cost.

## R

**RACI.** The responsibility matrix on the stakeholder register — who is
responsible, accountable, consulted and informed on a project.

**Rate card.** The set of bill rates and cost rates that price work. Seeing a
rate card and editing one are separate keys, and cost rates are treated as
salary-adjacent throughout.

**Recovery code.** A one-time code that answers a two-factor challenge when the
authenticator is unavailable. Ten are issued at once, shown once, and spending
one retires it.

**Register.** One of the four PMO logs on a project: risks, issues, decisions
and stakeholders. They are deliberately separate permissions, because different
people keep them.

**Reporting currency.** The single currency every financial total in the
workspace is expressed in. Chosen during onboarding and effectively permanent
once financial data exists.

**Retainer.** A pre-agreed balance a client draws down against, with a ledger
of the draws. Configuring one, reading the balance and posting a manual
adjustment are three permissions.

## S

**Safety number.** A short value derived from two devices' key fingerprints. If
both screens show the same number, no third party sat in the middle. It is what
you check when linking a device by typed code rather than by QR.

**Sandbox.** A copy of a workspace for trying things, which captures outbound
effects instead of sending them. Sandboxes are entered deliberately from inside
the parent workspace, and never appear in the workspace picker at sign-in.

**SCIM.** Automatic user provisioning and deprovisioning from your identity
directory. Business plan.

**Session.** One signed-in device, tracked as a row you can see and end.
Projectri allows one ordinary session per platform — one browser, one iPhone,
one Android — plus up to three linked devices.

**Slug.** The first segment of a workspace URL. It can only be changed while
the founder is still the only member; after a teammate joins, changing it would
break every link already shared.

**SSO.** Single sign-on via OIDC. A workspace can offer it, or require it — and
a workspace that requires it refuses passwords for its own members while still
letting them sign in to other workspaces with one.

**Stage gate.** A checkpoint between project phases with defined criteria and
named approvers. A gate decision is one of pass, pass with exception, or fail.

**Status / stage.** A task's position in the workflow. Statuses are
workspace-wide rather than per project, which is what lets My Tasks, reports
and automations mean the same thing everywhere.

## T

**Ticket.** A support request, either raised internally or by a client through
the portal. Triage, assignment and resolution are one permission,
`support.manage`.

## U

**Utilisation.** The share of a period's working hours that were logged as
billable, computed from approved time entries and the workspace's working week.
It is backward-looking; bench is the forward-looking counterpart.

## W

**WIP limit.** A cap on how many tasks may sit in a board column at once. Set
by whoever holds `task.board_config` — a limit changes what colleagues are
allowed to do, so it is not part of ordinary task editing.

**Work item type.** A named shape of work — Bug, Story, Change — with its own
statuses and required fields. Defining one is workspace-wide configuration.

**Working week.** Which days of the week count as working days. It is
provisioned from the workspace's country during onboarding, and the finance
engine divides by it — a Gulf firm left on Monday to Friday has every
utilisation figure wrong.

**Write-off.** Reducing an invoice or a billing proposal below its standard
value. Reducing a proposal line and writing off an unpaid invoice balance are
different permissions.

## Related

- [Core concepts](/docs/start/concepts) — the eight words that come first.
- [Roles and permissions](/docs/start/roles-and-permissions) — how a permission key is decided.
- [Plans and entitlements](/docs/features/plans-and-entitlements) — what each plan includes.
- [Messaging and encryption](/docs/features/messaging-and-e2ee) — device keys, envelopes and safety numbers in full.

## Related

- [Core concepts](https://projectri.com/docs/start/concepts.md): Workspace, project, task, client, time entry — the eight words the rest of the product assumes you already know.
- [Roles and permissions](https://projectri.com/docs/start/roles-and-permissions.md): The four workspace roles, the permission keys behind them, and why two people in the same workspace see different screens.
- [How permissions work](https://projectri.com/docs/features/permissions-model.md): The three tiers Projectri decides "may this person do this" with, how a role default becomes one person's answer, and the two traps that catch every new key.
- [Plans and entitlements](https://projectri.com/docs/features/plans-and-entitlements.md): What each plan includes, what happens when you hit a limit, and why losing a feature never loses the data behind it.