Glossary: Vox Terminology

Glossary: Vox Terminology

Actor

A stateful, autonomous unit of computation that communicates via asynchronous messages. In Vox, actors are modeled as plain functions — one per handler. The runtime manages the mailbox and checkpoints state automatically.

fn CounterActor_Increment(current: int, amount: int) to int {
    return current + amount
}

ADT (Algebraic Data Type)

A composite type formed by combining other types. In Vox, this primarily refers to Structs (product types) and Enums (sum types/tagged unions).

// vox:skip
type Status = | Pending | Active(user: str)

AI-Native

A design philosophy where the programming language and toolchain are built to be consumed and generated by LLMs, emphasizing compiler-enforced constraints to eliminate hallucinations.

Arca

The low-level SQL database abstraction and migration layer in the Vox runtime.

Codex

The unified data and knowledge store in Vox (the logical database environment), acting as a high-level facade over Arca (the physical SQLite/Turso layer).

DEI (Distributed Execution Intelligence)

The Vox orchestrator responsible for task dispatch, agent lifecycle management, file affinity, and runtime telemetry.

Durable Execution

The ability of a program (specifically a Workflow) to persist its state and progress so that it can resume exactly where it left off after an interruption or crash using an interpreted journal.

HIR (High-level Intermediate Representation)

The semantic representation of Vox source code used for type checking and initial lowering phases.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

An open standard that enables AI models to safely interact with local data and tools. Vox provides first-class support for exporting functions as MCP tools via @mcp.tool.

@mcp.tool "Search KB"
fn search_kb(topic: str) to str { return "ok" }

Mens

Pronounced: ‘mens’ (Latin for mind) The Vox fine-tuning lane, training pipeline for local model generation, and interpreted workflow runtime layer.

Populi

The Vox control plane and peer-to-peer mesh for distributed execution, serving inferences, and GPU resource orchestration.

SCIENTIA

Pronounced: ‘shee-en-tee-ah’ (Latin for knowledge) The research and evidence-gathering framework within the Vox ecosystem for validating AI performance and language ergonomics.

TOESTUB

The architectural quality enforcement system in Vox that prevents “skeleton code” (unimplemented stubs or empty bodies) from leaking into production pipelines and tracks architectural debt.

Unit

The empty type, equivalent to void in C/TS or () in Rust.

Workflow

A durable, long-running process expressed as a plain fn, supporting orchestrated activities, retries, timeouts, and state persistence via the interpreted runtime (ADR-019).

fn onboard(user: str) to Result[bool] { return Ok(true) }