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Glossary

Plain-English definitions of the terms used across these docs. Most link to the page where the concept is explained in depth.

Term Meaning
Coordinator The main reasoning agent. It receives your question, decides how to investigate, calls tools, and writes the final answer. Runs on the larger model (gpt-4o by default). See Agent Behaviors.
Subagent A domain specialist (one of pod, metrics, logs, events) that the coordinator dispatches in parallel during a root-cause analysis. Each returns a structured finding. Runs on the cheaper model (gpt-4o-mini).
Context fetcher The workflow step that runs before the agent thinks — it pre-fetches a cluster snapshot (pods + Warning events) so the agent starts with situational awareness.
Memory loader The step that loads pinned, cross-session context (user prefs, past root causes, failure hints) into the prompt. Active only on PostgreSQL.
Cluster snapshot The pre-fetched picture of cluster health (pod list + Warning events) built at the start of every turn. Drives playbook matching and the snapshot sufficiency gate.
Snapshot sufficiency gate A soft bias that lets the agent answer healthy, list-shaped questions straight from the snapshot instead of re-querying. Modes: off / lenient / strict. See Agent Behaviors.
Playbook A YAML investigation recipe for a known failure (CrashLoopBackOff, OOMKilled, …). When the snapshot matches, the playbook is injected into the prompt to guide the agent. 18 ship by default. See Playbook library.
Investigation plan A visible, up-front checklist the agent emits for queries needing 3+ steps, streamed as a plan event so the UI can show it.
RCA Root-Cause Analysis — the deep investigation path where four subagents run in parallel and the coordinator synthesizes their findings into one conclusion.
RCAResult The structured output of an RCA: root cause, confidence, supporting evidence, conflicting evidence, reasoning, and a recommended fix. See What you can ask.
AgentFinding A single subagent's structured contribution to an RCA (signals, hypothesis, confidence, evidence).
HITL Human-in-the-Loop — the approval gate that pauses before any write operation runs, showing you the exact command. See HITL gate.
Always-confirm gate A set of cascading-blast actions (delete namespace, delete pv/crd, set image/resources, drain) that always require explicit approval, even in auto-approve mode.
auto_approve A per-request flag that skips routine approval gates for trusted automation. The always-confirm gate still fires.
Reflexion The cross-session learning loop: KubeIntellect records verified root-cause outcomes and promotes recurring, confirmed patterns back into future prompts. PostgreSQL only. See Reflexion Subsystem.
Failure pattern A recurring, verified problem signature that reflexion has promoted; it is recalled (cluster-scoped) to speed up future diagnoses.
TARGETED A routing outcome: one specific resource is failing, so the agent runs a focused three-read investigation on it before answering.
RCA_REQUIRED A routing outcome: the failure is ambiguous or cross-cutting, so the agent fans out to the four subagents for a full RCA.
ki_event The side-channel message type on the SSE stream that carries progress (status, tool calls, tool results, plans) without disturbing OpenAI-compatible clients. See API Reference.
Tool A capability the agent can invoke: run_kubectl, run_helm (read-only), query_prometheus, query_loki.
Role / RBAC tier The permission level of an API key: readonly, operator, admin, superadmin — determines which kubectl verbs the agent may run. See Security.
Demo key A short-lived, read-only HMAC API key minted on demand for time-boxed access (e.g. the public browser demo).
Checkpointer / thread LangGraph's state store. Each conversation (keyed by X-Session-ID) is a thread whose state is persisted so a paused HITL turn can resume.
kq / kube-q The command-line query client you talk to KubeIntellect with. Separate package (kube-q). See CLI Reference.
LangGraph The agent-orchestration framework KubeIntellect is built on — it defines the workflow graph (memory → context → coordinator → subagents → synthesis).