Glossary

The Exponential Method and the Agent principles use a small vocabulary. Each term below means the same thing in both.

The State

• State: the recorded understanding: priorities, work, decisions, commitments, owners, blockers and open questions. A model of reality, not reality itself. Written with a capital S for the whole; a single field, such as a project's status, is a status, never a state.
• Drift: a gap between reality and the State. Staleness is a warning sign, not proof.
• Ceremony: a named, repeatable practice for reviewing the State and recording outcomes. It can be individual, assistant-supported, asynchronous or live. Occurrence: one run of a ceremony. Agenda: an occurrence's starting selection of what needs attention.
• Decision: an authorized choice with an owner, rationale, date and evidence. Open question: something unresolved. Draft: proposed, not yet accepted.
• Action: work to perform. Carry-forward: the explicit next disposition of unresolved work.

The State Loop

• State Loop: the five activities the method connects. Observe what happened, with evidence and provenance; interpret what it means for goals, assumptions and commitments; decide the choices and responsibilities that follow; act on the authorized work; reconcile the results back into the State and identify what remains unresolved.

Agent guidance

• Agent principles: how Exponential expects any agent to work in a workspace: four fixed principles plus defaults a team may tailor.
• Fixed principle: one of the four principles AI instructions can't override: record integrity, evidence-based completion, authorized agency and change integrity.
• Default: a practice a team's AI instructions may tailor, such as which ceremonies to run, completion criteria set up front, autonomy on low-stakes work, the disposition of unfinished work, and vocabulary and tone.
• AI instructions: a workspace's or project's own guidance for agents. Background guidance, never authority: it can tailor the defaults but can't override a fixed principle or grant new authority.