Core Concepts

This glossary defines the user-visible objects that Supporters encounter when configuring and troubleshooting Polygent. Each concept links to its operating guide.

Workspace

A workspace binds Polygent to a Git repository. It is the unit of multi-tenant isolation: users, sessions, tickets, bots, environment variables, hooks, tasks, and templates all live inside a workspace.

• Configurable Git URL, default branch, PAT, and ticket source (None / GitHub / TFS)
• Per-workspace system prompts for Chat, Develop, Merge Conflicts, and Insights
• Workspace users with admin auto-access; non-admins must be assigned explicitly
• Workspace tasks — named scripts (Bash, PowerShell, etc.) reusable from sessions and hooks

→ See Workspaces guide

Session

A session is one AI run isolated in its own Git worktree. This separation allows concurrent work without sharing a working directory; actual concurrency depends on configured host capacity and available compute.

Mode	Worktree	Use case
Chat	Persistent	Ongoing conversation, repo Q&A
Develop	Ephemeral	Task-focused work that closes when done
Bot	Persistent	Bot-driven conversation

Sessions support Manual or Auto development modes, per-session toggles (Edge Cases, Code Review, Verification, Update Tests, Update Docs), the Monaco editor, file @ mentions, slash commands, and a built-in Git panel.

→ See Sessions guide

Ticket

A ticket is a unit of trackable work that flows through a pipeline of stages: Pending → Queued → Implementation → Developer Approval → QA Approval → Pull Request → Completed (and may end in Failed, Canceled, or Merge Conflicts). Tickets can be created manually, generated from a Plan, generated from an Insight, or synced from GitHub Issues / Azure DevOps Work Items.

• Lifecycle modes: QA First (default) or Merge First
• Approval flow: developer approval, QA approval (with rejection feedback and attachments), or skip-to-merge
• Iteration tracking: rework grouped by QA rejection rounds
• Queue: tickets start automatically as host capacity frees up, with high-priority tickets picked up first

→ See Tickets guide and Ticket Sync guide

Workflow

A workflow is a reusable multi-step procedure. Steps can be: Message, Clear Context, Asset, Complete Session, Generate Instruction File, Send System Message, or Ralph Loop.

• Auto-advance at the workflow or step level
• Auto-Implementation flag for fire-and-forget runs (no required init params)

→ See Workflows guide

Plan

A plan is the AI Planner — a 6-step AI-guided spec wizard: Configuration → Understanding → Clarifications → Recommendations → Specifications → Review. PMs and stakeholders turn plain language into a structured plan file with no developer in the middle to translate; the output can be exported or converted directly into a ticket.

• Auto-answer modes: MVP, Balanced, Features-Rich, Custom
• Guided clarification and recommendation stages
• An isolated worktree for repository-aware planning

→ See AI Planner guide

Ralph Loop

Iterative refinement: re-run the same prompt across context resets until the agent signals completion, the max iterations are reached, or no Git changes occur. Available as a session-level run or as a workflow step. Useful for "loop until tests pass" and "loop until spec is complete" patterns.

→ See Ralph Loop in the Sessions guide

Bot

A bot is a long-lived AI assistant with a fixed system prompt, scoped to a workspace or available globally. Bots back Chat-mode sessions for fast Q&A, triage, or guided support.

→ See Bots guide

Round Table

A round table examines a topic from multiple AI perspectives. Pick personas (Moderator, Devil's Advocate, Steelman, Senior Developer, QA Lead, Product Owner, Designer, or custom workspace personas), send a message, and review the resulting discussion. Round tables support voting, running summaries, and export to TXT or Markdown.

→ See Round Table guide

Automation

Automations are scheduled or triggered runs of inline prompts or workflows.

Type	Trigger
One-Time	Specific date/time (with a short grace for past times)
Recurring	5-field cron expression with IANA timezone
Loop	Re-execute after the previous session completes
Manual	Run-now button only
HTTP Trigger	An external webhook URL with a secret token

Recurring and Loop automations auto-disable after 3 consecutive failures; One-Time automations disable on the first failure; Manual and HTTP Trigger automations are never auto-disabled. The automation's creator receives an inbox notification linking to the executions view so the failure can be investigated.

→ See Automations guide

Insight

An insight is a piece of learning auto-extracted from a completed Develop session — categorized as Documentation, Skill, Process Improvement, Performance, User Experience, Nice to Have, Tests, or Other. Dismiss them, turn them into tickets, or use them to feed your docs/skills/commands back into the team's tooling.

→ See Insights guide

Hook

Session hooks run user-defined tasks at lifecycle events: session creation, session start, agent turn complete, session done, and session canceled. Hooks can reference workspace tasks or use inline scripts, with retries, timeouts, branch filters, and an automatic circuit breaker on repeated failures.

→ See Session Hooks in the Sessions guide

Memory

A Memory Store is a per-workspace named bucket of string items that agents can read and write at runtime via the built-in MCP Server. Memory persists across sessions — useful for capturing project conventions, recurring decisions, and team knowledge that should follow every agent run instead of dying overnight.

→ See Memory guide

IDE Integration

Open any session in your local IDE with a one-liner script (Bash or PowerShell). Push uncommitted changes back to the server with a second script, or pull from your local Git remote into the session worktree. Download tokens expire after 5 minutes and are single-use.

→ See IDE Integration in the Sessions guide

Deployment Worker

A Deployment Worker runs slots: long-lived branch deployments controlled by startup and shutdown commands. Use slots to deploy one session or a group of ticket branches for QA, demos, or staging. Every deployment slot requires a connected worker.

→ See Deployment Worker guide

Worktree

Every session, plan, and round table runs against an isolated Git worktree on the server's storage path. Worktrees are created on demand and cleaned up when sessions end (Develop) or when explicitly disposed (Chat).

Permissions

Role-based access control combines system permissions with workspace membership. Administrators bypass permission checks, and the first user to sign in becomes an administrator. Review that account and configure least-privilege roles before allowing additional users.

→ See Permissions guide

Real-Time Updates

Session and workspace updates appear automatically for connected users. If updates stop, verify the reverse proxy supports persistent upgraded connections and that network timeouts do not terminate them.

MCP Server

Polygent exposes an MCP endpoint for approved tools such as ticket and session lookup. Each agent run receives a temporary credential bound to its identity, session, workspace, and allowed tools; ending the session revokes that authorization. Restrict /mcp to trusted worker networks as defense in depth. Administrators can also register approved external MCP servers for agent sessions.

→ See MCP Server guide

Merge Conflicts

A guided workflow for resolving conflicts between two branches. Initiate from branch names, a GitHub PR URL, or an Azure DevOps PR URL. Polygent attempts an AI-assisted resolution in the background (up to 30 minutes) and falls back to a review diff editor (starter branch → resolved content) for manual fixes. Clean merges auto-commit and push; only one active merge per workspace.

→ See Merge Conflicts guide

External Integrations

Integration	Capabilities
GitHub	OAuth login, issue sync, issue creation, PR creation and live status tracking
Azure DevOps / TFS	Work item sync (Bugs), area-path/tag filters, status mapping, PR/MR tracking
Git operations	Clone, fetch, push, pull, worktree isolation, credential handling

GitHub uses workspace-level PATs. Azure DevOps supports per-user PATs, managed under your Profile.

Statistics

The Statistics Dashboard is a platform-wide analytics surface with summary cards plus dedicated views for sessions, tickets, bots, workflows, queues, insights, costs/tokens, user activity, session performance, and hook tasks. Managers get cycle time, cost-per-ticket in USD, and QA rejection rate in one place — the standup is the dashboard. Filter by workspace and date range (Last 7/30/90 Days, This Month, Custom). Results may be briefly cached, so recent activity can take a short time to appear.

→ See Statistics guide

AI Cost Budget

Spend caps at three independent tiers — global (all workspaces), per-workspace, and per-task — measured in real time against per-message cost. Warnings fire at a configurable threshold (default 80%); blocking tiers cancel the offending session when the limit is hit. Per-task budgets are always enforced.

→ See AI Cost Budgets guide

My Work & Notifications

My Work is the unified sidebar surface that merges your active sessions, draft plans, active round tables, and notifications into one live list, with a full history at /my-work. The inbox delivers targeted alerts — failed hooks, pending approvals, budget warnings — only to the people responsible, with optional browser push.

→ See Notifications & My Work guide

User Authentication

OAuth2 sign-in via Google, Microsoft, or any OpenID Connect-compatible identity provider. Polygent issues short-lived access tokens (15 minutes) backed by 7-day rotating refresh tokens stored in secure, HttpOnly cookies. Auth state syncs automatically across browser tabs, and seamless SSO is supported.