Glossary

Every term the Vmax workspace uses, defined once: one word, one meaning. Documentation, hints, and skills link to a term here instead of restating it, so a definition changes in one place.

TermDefinition
AppContainer
The shell component every tools page renders: it draws the navigation, the sidebar groups it is given, and the toolbar around the columns a caller passes.See alsoTools page, Form kit
Atlas
Every task from every campaign an account can read, in one place. The API keeps no cross-campaign index, so the Atlas reads one campaign at a time and merges what comes back, owned campaigns first and the read-only examples after.See alsoTask matrix, Example campaigns
Campaign
Vmax's self-play task generation product: the Campaign API, the workers that run the loop in sandboxes, and the /campaigns application. It turns proprietary data and evals into new environments and refines agents on new examples of the tasks they are meant to perform. Each run of it is a campaign instance.See alsoCampaign instance, Setter, Solver, Task
Campaign agent activity
The audit trail of a run: one row per event the campaign agent recorded while it ran the loop, from building the task setting to dispatching solver rollouts. It is what makes every number on a campaign page defensible.See alsoCampaign instance, Reproducibility
Campaign data
Everything the Campaign API answered for a campaign, as downloadable files: the immutable record, the compact task rows, every worker event with its payload, the retained trial snapshots and log rows, and the inventory of stored evidence.See alsoStored evidence, Reproducibility
Campaign instance
One self-play run of Campaign. It takes a single INSTRUCTION.md, authors a pack of tasks in that domain over the number of setter iterations requested, and measures a solver against every task. An instance is immutable once created; its record is what every page reads back.See alsoCampaign, INSTRUCTION.md, Iteration, Campaign status
Campaign settings
The run-level parameters that are also the design of the evaluation: how large the task pack is, how many setter rounds produce it, how many rollouts stand behind each solve rate, the concurrency, and how long the whole run may take. Setter and solver settings bound each side's trials.See alsoIteration, Rollout, Runtime image, Trial configuration
Campaign status
Where a campaign instance is: building while the loop is authoring and measuring; completed when every iteration ran and the loop ended on its own; failed when the worker exited, timed out, or lost its sandbox; stopped when it was cancelled on request. Failed and stopped campaigns keep every rollout already graded, and neither resumes.See alsoCampaign instance
Campaign trials
The trials of a campaign that no task owns: the certification trial that proved the task pack, a setter trial whose task has not landed yet, and any trial whose parent is unknown. A task's own setter and solver trials are listed with the task instead.See alsoTrial, Certified task pack
Certified task pack
The task setting after it has been proved in the certification trial and before any iteration is paid for: the code the setter runs inside, the environment it builds tasks in, and the verifier contract, stored with the digest the campaign record names.See alsoTask setting, Smoke trial, Campaign trials
Crystal agent
The faceted crystal character the engine animates: a family of states (pause, run, cleave, narrate) with a cap and badge, used on the chessboard showcases, the lumberjack raid, and as the tools shell's narrator.See alsoShowcase, Hint avatar
Difficulty mix
One bar that sorts every measured task by how the solver fared on it: always passed, frontier, never passed. It is the campaign's generated task difficulty at a glance.See alsoFrontier band, Workload analysis
Distant islands
The home-page ring of islands out on the ocean curve, built from the same island presets as the centre and placed on the ellipsoid the ocean shader curves the world onto.See alsoIsland, Ocean ellipsoid
Document trigger
A content rule that selects a post's scene from its body: the image count, whether it has a blockquote, LaTeX, or a code block, and certain words decide the island, its structures, and its mode. Every island doc names the trigger that produces it.See alsoworldType, Island, Post
Entity
A unit of scene behaviour mounted by the world builder: it publishes what it exposes, subscribes to what it needs, is gated by the manifest, and runs its own per-frame update. Ocean board, terrain, castle, fleet, forest, and volcano are entities.See alsoMount manifest, Island
Environment
The sandbox a trial runs in: the runtime image, the task files placed on disk, the dependencies installed from them, and the network policy. A task is not only a question; it is a place the agent works, and the environment is that place.See alsoTask files, Runtime image, Trial, Task
Example campaigns
Campaign instances Vmax ran and certified, listed read-only for every account. Each is a real finished loop with its task pack, trials, and environment files, so the product can be understood from a result before anything is spent.See alsoCampaign instance, Atlas
Form kit
The Form* components in next-vmax-tools (tables, cards, inputs, disclosures, hints, typography) that every tools page body is composed from, so every page reads as one system.See alsoTools page, Hint
Frontier band
The tasks the solver passed on some rollouts and failed on others. A task passed every time is too easy to learn from and one never passed is too hard; the frontier band is where learning signal lives, and a working campaign shifts task mass into it.See alsoSolve rate, Difficulty mix, Workload analysis
Glossary
This page: one definition per term the workspace uses, and only one. Docs, hints, and skills link here instead of redefining a term; a new term is added here first, and a word never carries two meanings.See alsoHint
Hint
The (?) affordance beside a heading or label that opens a card explaining what the thing is, with a diagram, an optional table, the reading avatar, and links to the glossary terms it uses.See alsoHint avatar, Glossary
Hint avatar
The portrait beside every hint card and at the top of the glossary. Its READ button sends the text to the speech endpoint and reads it aloud, lighting each word as it is spoken.See alsoHint, Glossary
Instruction
The text an agent is handed to act on. A campaign has one, the INSTRUCTION.md that describes the kind of task wanted; every task has one, the task instruction that states one concrete problem. The setter turns the first into the second.See alsoINSTRUCTION.md, Task instruction, Setter
INSTRUCTION.md
The prompt a campaign is launched with, exactly as submitted in the composer: the domain, what a good task looks like, the deliverable a solver must produce, how it is verified, and what to reject. It is the one input a campaign has; every task descends from it.See alsoCampaign instance, Task instruction, Setter
Island
One scene the engine can mount on the centre of the ocean board: a terrain of a worldType plus the content flags and showcase that add structures. Every island is a preset row and has its own folder and doc.See alsoPreset, worldType, Showcase, Distant islands
Iteration
One setter round, the generation step that produces a batch of tasks. A campaign runs the number of iterations it was asked for; each conditions on what the previous one measured.See alsoSetter, Campaign instance, Task matrix
Long horizon campaign
A campaign paid for once and left to work across many setter rounds, where each round conditions on the solve rates the previous round measured so the task mass moves toward the frontier.See alsoCampaign instance, Iteration, Frontier band
Mount manifest
The scene JSON plus the preset flags that decide which entities mount for a scene mode. An entity's manifest gate is the condition under which it is built at all.See alsoEntity, Preset
Ocean ellipsoid
The curved surface the ocean is drawn on, so distant scenery drops below the horizon. Anything placed away from the centre must be wrapped to that curve or it floats or sinks.See alsoDistant islands
Post
A markdown document published to VMAX.ai at /{username}/{slug}: Slate JSON on the server, rendered as a paper with an isometric scene behind it. Research papers are posts curated onto the /research index.See alsoworldType, Document trigger, Scene overlay shader
Preset
One row in the island catalog: a worldType, content flags, and an optional showcase. A preset row is the manifest input; the stage instances any preset, and a scene is browsed at /-/vmax-tools-template/islands/{key}.See alsoIsland, Showcase, Mount manifest
Reproducibility
The record needed to run a campaign again and expect the same workload: the trial settings the request was launched with, exactly as the worker read them, and the campaign agent's activity log in order.See alsoTrial configuration, Campaign agent activity
Rollout
One solver attempt at one task, scored by the verifier. Several rollouts stand behind each solve rate; the number per task is a campaign setting.See alsoSolver, Solve rate, Trial
Runtime image
The container image every setter and solver trial runs inside, one of the campaign settings. It fixes the operating system and the interpreter for the whole run.See alsoTask files, Campaign settings
Scene overlay shader
One of the WebGL overlays drawn over a document from the shared shader context, such as the grain, burn, or water drop effects, rendered into slots the document layer schedules.See alsoPost
Setter
The side of self-play that manufactures the evaluation. A setter trial reads the prompt, writes a task instruction, builds its environment, and ships a verifier, inside its own sandbox under the setter budgets.See alsoSolver, Validator, Trial, Task
Showcase
A named structure or mode added on top of a terrain, such as the motte-and-bailey castle, the palisade path, the crystal-agent chessboard, or dock recruitment. It is the third part of a preset after worldType and content flags.See alsoPreset, Island, Entity
Smoke trial
The first pass through the task setting, run before the real loop starts: one setter attempt authors a single task, one solver rollout attempts it, and the verifier scores the result. It proves the pipeline end to end and measures nothing; a failing smoke task stops the campaign before anything else is spent.See alsoTask setting, Certified task pack
Solve rate
The fraction of a task's solver rollouts the verifier passed. It is the measurement a campaign produces, per task and aggregated per iteration and per campaign.See alsoRollout, Verifier, Frontier band
Solver
The side of self-play being evaluated. Each solver rollout is one sandboxed attempt at a task under the solver budgets, scored by the verifier when it finishes or when its timeout expires.See alsoSetter, Rollout, Solve rate
Stored evidence
The terminal record of a task's trials, read back from Campaign's own database rather than the live stream: for the setter trial that authored the task and the evaluation trial that measured it, every stored descendant with its agent trajectory turn by turn.See alsoTrial, Task, Campaign data
Task
One evaluation item, three things at once: the instruction the agent reads, the environment it works in, and the verifier that decides its reward. The setter authored it, the validator accepted it, and the solver was measured on it.See alsoTask instruction, Task files, Verifier
Task files
The files a task puts on disk before the agent starts: the repository checkout, fixtures, and the dependency declarations the environment installs. Together with the runtime image they fix what the agent can reach, and they carry as much weight as the instruction.See alsoEnvironment, Task, Runtime image
Task instruction
The problem statement the setter writes for one task, the exact text the agent is handed and the most important artefact on a task page. The campaign INSTRUCTION.md described the kind of task wanted; this is the one concrete problem it became.See alsoINSTRUCTION.md, Task, Setter
Task matrix
The Atlas grid where each row is a campaign and each column a setter iteration. A cell counts the tasks that campaign generated in that iteration and is shaded by their solve rate.See alsoAtlas, Iteration, Solve rate
Task setting
The code the campaign agent writes from the INSTRUCTION.md before any task exists: a small package that tells the setter how to build a task, what an environment for it contains, and how a verifier decides a reward. The setter runs inside it on every iteration.See alsoCertified task pack, Setter, Verifier, Smoke trial
Tools page
A page on the shared Vmax tools shell: the top navigation, a sidebar, the fixed bottom toolbar, and one or more body columns composed from the Form kit. /-/vmax-tools-template is the reference every tools page clones.See alsoAppContainer, Form kit
Trial
One sandboxed agent run with a purpose: a setter trial authors a task, a validator trial checks it, a solver trial (a rollout) attempts it, and the certification trial proves the task pack. A single task is produced and measured by several trials.See alsoSetter, Solver, Validator, Rollout, Campaign trials
Trial configuration
The request a campaign was launched with, read back from the campaign record rather than the settings panel, so it is what the worker actually ran.See alsoCampaign settings, Reproducibility
Validator
The trial that checks an authored task against the campaign's acceptance rules before it becomes an evaluation item. A task the validator rejects is never measured and is not counted.See alsoSetter, Verifier, Task
Verifier
The program shipped with a task that decides its reward: it reads what a solver rollout produced and returns pass or fail. The verifier, not a judge, is what makes a solve rate defensible.See alsoTask, Solver, Solve rate
Workload analysis
How the difficulty of generated tasks moved across a campaign's iterations, the clearest picture of whether self-play did its job.See alsoDifficulty mix, Iteration
worldType
The terrain family a scene is built on: GRASS, ICE, DESERT, or their variants. It is derived from a post's content, and each type has its own terrain recipe, palette, and the structures it may carry.See alsoDocument trigger, Island, Preset