Glossary
Key terms used throughout Nexus OS documentation.
Core Concepts
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Rumpk | The Nexus sovereign unikernel kernel. Zig HAL + Nim logic. 280KB. The kernel boundary is a protocol, not a syscall ABI. |
| Rumkv | Type-1 hypervisor layer operating at EL2 (ARM64), Ring-1 (x86), or M-Mode (RISC-V). |
| ION Ring | Lock-free single-producer/single-consumer ring buffer used for all IPC. |
| Kernel Protocol | The stable contract between userland and kernel: typed ION Ring packets, signed BKDL descriptors, and capability verbs. The application-facing surface. |
| Trap ABI | The CPU-facing entry layer (ecall / svc #0 / syscall). Implementation detail of how the protocol is mechanically submitted; allowed to change per architecture. |
| SysTable | The Trap-ABI entry surface at a known physical address (0x83000000 on RISC-V, 0x50000000 on ARM64). 136 bytes. Carries ION ring descriptors + fast-path function pointers + framebuffer info. |
| Fiber | Cooperative execution context within the kernel. Not a thread — no preemptive multitasking at kernel level. |
| Membrane | The libnexus.a compatibility layer. A "biosuit" that wraps POSIX calls and routes them through sovereign abstractions. |
| ProvChain | Cryptographic audit ledger using BLAKE3 + Ed25519. Records every boot, module load, and state change. |
| Grafting | Strategic borrowing of code from Linux/BSD ecosystems, wrapped in sovereign abstractions and security constraints. |
| Sovereignize | The process of replacing grafted foreign code with native Nexus implementations. |
| Liquid Computing | The architectural paradigm of recipe-driven, adaptive operating systems. Liquid Computing has no mandatory kernel, no mandatory execution architecture, and is plural — many different OS architectures can be produced under it. Nexus OS is one such architecture; others are conceivable. See The Three Layers for the relationship between paradigm (Liquid Computing), mechanism (Nexus Forge), and product (Nexus OS). |
| Nexus Forge | The build pipeline and factory mechanism that turns a KDL recipe (Recipe + Modules + Target) into a bootable, provenance-tracked Nexus OS image. Embodies the Liquid Computing paradigm concretely. The doctrine is Graft. Evolve. Sovereignize. See The Liquid Computing Philosophy for the full doctrine and Foundry for the current build pipeline. |
| Nexus OS | The concrete sovereign operating architecture produced by the Nexus Forge under the Liquid Computing paradigm. Has strong opinions: Rumpk (kernel), ION (IPC), NexFS (storage), Cellular Memory, Harmonic Scheduler, Pledge security, Membrane. One of many possible Liquid Computing implementations, but currently the flagship. See What is Nexus OS? for the public overview. |
Package Taxonomy
| Type | Name | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| NPS | Nip Sensor | Single-purpose sensor firmware | Temperature probe |
| NPL | Nip Library | Drivers and filters in isolated VMs | WiFi driver, printer driver |
| NPX | Nip eXtension | Hot-loadable hooks (eBPF replacement) | Packet filter, tracing |
| NPM | Nip Module | Pure logic libraries | Orbital math, crypto |
| NPK | Nip Package | End-user applications | Firefox, KDE |
| NPI | Nip Interface | API bridges | HTTP adapter, gRPC |
Isolation
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| NipCell | Lightweight isolation container. GoboLinux-style symlink isolation. The "Flatpak killer". |
| Nexter | Heavy container using namespace/jail/VM-based isolation. KDL blueprints replace Dockerfiles. |
| CSpace | Capability space. 64 slots per fiber. Each slot holds a typed capability (channel ID + permission mask). |
| Pledge | OpenBSD-style capability restriction. One-way ratchet — once pledged, permissions can only shrink, never grow. |
| Unveil | Filesystem visibility restriction. A process can only see paths it has been explicitly granted access to. |
Security
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Capability Algebra | The 7 primitive operations: SPAWN, SEND, RECV, MAP, MASK, TICK, GRANT. |
| Law of Decay | Capabilities degrade over time and delegation depth. Prevents privilege accumulation. |
| Kinetic Economy | Energy-budget rate limiting. Every operation costs energy. Prevents DoS by exhausting budgets. |
| TOFU+ | Trust On First Use with key pinning. Initial trust establishment for network peers. |
| Airlock | Quarantine zone for untrusted code. New modules enter the airlock before being granted system access. |
Storage
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| NexFS | The Nexus filesystem. Dual-axis design: storage class (Atom/Sovereign/Archive) × network scope (Local/Cluster/Federation). |
| CAS | Content-Addressable Store. Files addressed by their BLAKE3 hash, not by path. |
| CDC | Content-Defined Chunking. Files split at content boundaries for efficient deduplication and sync. |
| DAG | Directed Acyclic Graph. Version history stored as a Merkle DAG for efficient branching and merging. |
| TimeWarp | Instant filesystem snapshots using copy-on-write DAG nodes. |
| Sovereign FSH | The Nexus filesystem hierarchy: /Cas, /Nexus, /Cell, /Bus, /Data. Replaces POSIX FHS. |
| Block Valve | The kernel's storage interface. The kernel passes sectors; it does not interpret them. |
| BAM | Block Allocation Map. Tracks free/used blocks in NexFS. |
Network
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| NetSwitch | Kernel-level L2 packet demuxer. Routes frames by EtherType to the correct ION Ring. |
| UTCP | Unikernel Transport Control Protocol. Identity-centric, NACK-based sovereign transport. EtherType 0x88B5. |
| LWF | Libertaria Wire Frame protocol. EtherType 0x4C57. Part of the Libertaria protocol stack. |
| CellID | SipHash-128 identity used by UTCP. Nodes dial by CellID, not IP address. |
| LwIP | Lightweight IP stack, grafted from the open-source project and running in userland (Membrane). |
Build System
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| KDL | Configuration language used for recipes, manifests, system blueprints, and service definitions. |
| BKDL | Binary KDL. Packed manifests embedded in ELF sections for boot-time parsing. |
| STC | Standard Template Construct. A system profile definition (Tiny, Micro, Core, Fleet, Unikernel). |
| BEB | Boot Extension Block. Updatable microcode that extends Rumpk without modifying its frozen core. |
| Variant-CID | Cryptographic content identifier that uniquely identifies a specific build variant of any artifact. |
Display
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Surface Manager | Sovereign compositor. Zero-copy rendering, 120Hz Photon scheduling. |
| HUD | Heads-Up Display. Visual filesystem interface mounted at /Bus/hud/. |
| SSP | Surface Submission Protocol. How applications submit frames to the compositor. |
Scheduling Spectrums
| Spectrum | Deadline | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| Photon | 2ms | Interrupt handlers, DMA, real-time I/O |
| Matter | 10ms | Network processing, input events |
| Gravity | 50ms | Background computation, housekeeping |
| Void | Unlimited | Idle tasks, opportunistic work |