Glossary
Look-up definitions for terms used across the docs and the app. Cross-references in bold point to other glossary entries.
Activity
Section titled “Activity”A step in a process where work happens. The three activity types most relevant in Superprocess are service tasks, user tasks, and call activities. Drawn as a rounded rectangle in BPMN.
A configured AI step in a process. Each agent has a system prompt, a typed output schema, a model selection, and an optional set of tools it can call — drawn from connectors and MCP servers. Agents handle the cognitive work that can’t be expressed as deterministic logic — extracting fields from a PDF, classifying a ticket, summarising context.
Agents (page)
Section titled “Agents (page)”The project-scoped page (Build → Agents) where agents are created, versioned, and managed. Process service tasks bind to agents by name. (Earlier versions called this the “agent registry”.)
Assignee group
Section titled “Assignee group”A named group of members eligible to work a particular user task. Configured on the user task in the designer. A task that names the finance-approvers group is offered to every member of that group, subject to the task’s assignment strategy.
Assignment strategy
Section titled “Assignment strategy”How a user task is allocated to the members of its assignee group: offer-and-claim (anyone in the group may claim it), round-robin, random, or least-loaded. Set on the user task in the designer.
Audit log
Section titled “Audit log”Project-scoped record of every consequential action — task decisions, process deploys, role changes, secret rotations. Visible to project admins.
Business rule task
Section titled “Business rule task”A BPMN task that evaluates a Decision (a DMN model) and writes the result back into the process variables. The way to externalise rule-based logic from gateways, agents, and code. Drawn as a rounded rectangle with a table icon.
Call activity
Section titled “Call activity”An activity that runs another process as a sub-flow. The parent process waits for the called process to complete before continuing.
Catalog
Section titled “Catalog”The browsable library of connectors you can add, on the Settings → Integrations page — the external systems (Slack, databases, HTTP APIs, object storage, and more) available to set up for your organization.
Action a member takes on an unclaimed task in the inbox. A claimed task is exclusive to the claimer; other members can see it but can’t act on it. Release returns the task to the queue.
Compensation
Section titled “Compensation”A pattern where an activity has a paired “undo” activity. If a later step fails, the runtime fires compensation in reverse order to roll back the side effects of completed activities.
Concept (Diátaxis)
Section titled “Concept (Diátaxis)”In these docs, a page under /concepts/ that explains the mental model — the why and how behind a feature, without prescribing steps.
Condition expression
Section titled “Condition expression”A boolean expression evaluated against a process instance’s variables at a gateway. Determines which outgoing sequence flow to take. Example: amount < 10000 && po_matched == true.
Confidence (agent output)
Section titled “Confidence (agent output)”A 0–1 score a model can assign to an extracted field, indicating how sure it is. Low confidence values often flag fields a human should double-check.
Connector
Section titled “Connector”A configured connection to an external system (Slack, a database, an ERP, a ledger, object storage, a message queue, and more), set up from the catalog at Settings → Integrations. A connector can be called deterministically by a service task, or handed to an agent as a callable tool. Credentials live in secrets, referenced by name. Connectors are versioned.
Dashboard
Section titled “Dashboard”A composed view of charts and metrics over your workflow data, built on the Insights surface. Assemble one yourself, or ask the AI to build it from a plain-language question.
Decision
Section titled “Decision”A DMN model that externalises rule-based logic — a set of input conditions mapped to outputs. Invoked from a process by a business rule task. Lives on the project’s Build → Decisions page. Keeps rules out of code and agent prompts, where they’d be hard to read and audit.
Decision table
Section titled “Decision table”The grid of input conditions and output values inside a Decision — the DMN artefact you author. Each row is a rule; a hit policy decides what happens when several rows match.
Designer (canvas)
Section titled “Designer (canvas)”The drag-and-drop UI where you build process diagrams. Lives at Processes → [process] → Designer.
Decision Model and Notation — the open standard behind Decisions and decision tables, the counterpart to BPMN for rule logic.
End event
Section titled “End event”The terminal node of a process branch. Drawn as a thick-bordered circle. End event sub-types include None (success), Error (named failure), and Terminate (cancels parallel branches).
A BPMN element marking a moment in time. Three positions: start events kick a process off; intermediate events happen mid-flow; end events terminate a branch. Drawn as circles.
Event-based gateway
Section titled “Event-based gateway”A gateway type that waits for one of several events; whichever arrives first wins.
Exclusive gateway
Section titled “Exclusive gateway”A gateway that takes exactly one outgoing branch based on condition expressions. Drawn as a diamond with an X inside. The most common gateway.
A structured input screen — fields, validation, and optionally dynamic (add/remove) rows — designed in the form builder and bound to a user task. When the task lands in someone’s inbox, they complete it by filling in the form. Forms are versioned like any other building block.
Function
Section titled “Function”A reusable unit of custom logic, written in Python (def execute(input_data: dict) -> dict:), callable from process service tasks. Used for deterministic work the platform doesn’t ship out of the box — currency formatting, custom tax math, a bespoke validation. Has typed inputs/outputs, a category, and versions. Lives on the project’s Build → Functions page. (Also called a script function.)
Gateway
Section titled “Gateway”A BPMN element that branches or merges flow. Drawn as a diamond. Types: exclusive, parallel, inclusive, event-based, and complex.
A named set of members used to route work. A user task offered to a group is claimable by its members according to the task’s assignment strategy. Distinct from a role, which controls permissions rather than routing. Managed at Settings → Groups.
Human-in-the-loop. The pattern of pausing a process and creating a task when work needs human judgement.
Inclusive gateway
Section titled “Inclusive gateway”A gateway that takes every outgoing branch whose condition expression is true (one or more). Less common than exclusive.
Insight
Section titled “Insight”A chart or query over your workflow data — throughput, cycle time, outcomes by category. Insights compose into a dashboard. Lives on the project’s Monitor → Insights page.
Integration
Section titled “Integration”A connector to an external system, managed at the organization level (Settings → Integrations). The term is used interchangeably with connector in the UI. Distinct from an MCP server, which exposes a set of tools an agent calls dynamically.
Intermediate event
Section titled “Intermediate event”An event that happens partway through a process — a timer, a signal, a message waiting. Drawn as a thin double-bordered circle.
Library
Section titled “Library”The organization-level catalog of reusable, versioned building blocks shared across projects. An emerging surface; today it centres on published versions of building blocks such as agents and forms.
A horizontal band in a BPMN diagram grouping elements by role or system. Presentational only — doesn’t affect runtime.
MCP server
Section titled “MCP server”Model Context Protocol server — a typed tool server whose tools an agent can call dynamically. Set up on the MCP Servers tab of Settings → Integrations. Access is governed server-side: tools are exposed by role, and writes are guarded for non-admins. Distinct from a connector, though both can supply an agent’s tools.
Output schema
Section titled “Output schema”The typed shape an agent must produce. PydanticAI-style: named fields with types and descriptions. Used both to constrain the model’s response and to validate the result.
Parallel gateway
Section titled “Parallel gateway”A gateway that fans out to all branches simultaneously; a matching merge gateway waits for every branch to finish. Drawn as a diamond with a +.
Process definition
Section titled “Process definition”The diagram you build in the designer. A template — describes what should happen but isn’t yet running. You deploy a definition.
Process instance
Section titled “Process instance”One execution of a process definition. Each trigger fire creates a new instance with its own state and variables. Instances run concurrently and independently. Also called a run.
Project
Section titled “Project”The unit of grouping in Superprocess. A project holds its own processes, agents, functions, decisions, forms, and members. Connectors (integrations) and secrets are shared at the organization level, not per project.
Retry policy
Section titled “Retry policy”Per-step setting (default: 3 retries, exponential backoff). Controls how the runtime handles transient failures before marking a step Failed.
A named bundle of permissions. Organization roles are owner, admin, and member; project roles are owner, admin, editor, and viewer. Beyond these system roles you can define custom roles with granular, category-grouped permissions. Roles govern what a member may do; groups govern which work is routed to them. Managed under Settings → Roles and Settings → Members.
Shorthand for process instance.
Secret
Section titled “Secret”A credential stored in Conjur-backed secure storage at the organization level — AI provider keys, connector tokens, OAuth client secrets. Organised into project / org / environment tiers (org by default) and referenced by name from agents and connectors; values are never readable from the UI. Managed at Settings → Secrets.
Sequence flow
Section titled “Sequence flow”The arrow connecting two BPMN elements. Means after the source completes, the target runs next. Conditional flows out of an exclusive gateway carry a condition expression.
Service task
Section titled “Service task”An activity that runs automated work — an agent invocation, a connector call, or a function. Drawn as a rounded rectangle with a gear icon.
Signal
Section titled “Signal”A named event that processes can fire (<signal name>) and other processes or task handlers can listen for. Used to coordinate between concurrent process instances.
Start event
Section titled “Start event”The node where a process begins. Drawn as a thin-bordered circle. Carries the trigger configuration.
System prompt
Section titled “System prompt”The durable instructions to a model that define an agent’s behaviour. Authored on the Agents page.
A piece of work assigned to a human. Created when a process hits a user task, and completed by filling in its form. Lives in the Tasks inbox until claimed and completed; can be reassigned, delegated, or released.
A typed function an agent can call — supplied by a connector or an MCP server. The agent decides when to call which tool based on its prompt and input.
Trigger
Section titled “Trigger”Configuration on a start event that determines what kicks the process off. Types include Manual, Timer (scheduled), Message (an inbound email or webhook, via a Message start event), Signal, and Process (chained from another process).
User task
Section titled “User task”A BPMN activity that requires a human. Creates a task in the Tasks inbox — optionally rendering a bound form — and pauses the process until the task is completed. Drawn as a rounded rectangle with a person icon.
Variable (process variable)
Section titled “Variable (process variable)”A named value that travels with a process instance from step to step. Each step declares the variables it consumes and produces. Variables are typed; the platform enforces types at design time and runtime.
Version
Section titled “Version”Building blocks are versioned: each deploy of a process creates a new numbered version, and agents, functions, forms, connectors, and MCP servers can be published as versions too. For processes, in-flight instances continue on the version they started on; new triggers create instances on the latest version.
Workflow Executions
Section titled “Workflow Executions”The Monitor → Workflow Executions page: a searchable inbox of every process instance — running, completed, failed, awaiting a human. Filter by status, follow the sub-process tree, and open a run to its step-by-step timeline, where you can retry or replay it.