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Glossary

Definitions for the Adjudon-specific eigennames and the regulatory references this site cites. Each entry links to its primary reference page. Entries are alphabetical.

Jump: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · M · N · O · P · R · S · T

A​

ADL (Adjudon Decision Language)​

The typed customer-authoring surface for Adjudon policies (v0.1). Compiles to AWS Cedar via policyCompiler.compileV1ToCedar. The textual surface uses predicate-call syntax (e.g. confidence_below(0.7)); the JSON IR shape is produced by adlLifter.liftV1ToAdl. See ADL v0.1 Reference.

Auditor role​

The fifth OrgMember role (alongside owner / admin / member / viewer), added in Phase 3 Track B.2. Read-only access to the policy-engine compliance surface (GET /api/policies/audit/auditor-view). Designed for external auditors (PwC, BaFin examiners, EU AI Act notified bodies) — they see every fired policy, break-glass override, and approval transition without the ability to mutate anything.

Annex III​

The list of high-risk AI use cases in the EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) covering credit scoring, recruitment, education, law enforcement, migration, and administration of justice. Deployer of Annex III systems carries the FRIA obligation under Art. 27. See EU AI Act Compliance.

adj_live_ / adj_agent_​

The two Adjudon API-key prefixes. adj_live_<64-hex> is a workspace-level key; adj_agent_<48-hex> is per-agent. The prefix is recognised by GitHub's secret scanner. See Authentication.

AuditLog​

The Operations Audit Log: the second SHA-256 chain, distinct from the Decision Hash Chain, that records admin events (policy edits, key rotations, login). Read-access requires admin or owner role.

B​

Break-glass​

The Phase 2 Track B.4 emergency-override path on the multi-stakeholder approval workflow. An admin or owner can bypass the 3-role separation by typing the literal phrase BREAK GLASS plus a ≥50-character justification. The action records viaBreakGlass: true, breakGlassJustification: <text>, the actor identity, and the timestamp on the immutable audit chain. Surfaced in the Auditor View with a critical-severity badge. See Policy Governance.

BaFin​

The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht) — the supervisor for credit institutions, payment institutions, insurers, and investment firms in Germany; the canonical reader of DORA Art. 19 incident reports for German entities.

C​

Cedar​

The AWS-authored policy language and evaluation engine (open-source, CNCF Sandbox, peer-reviewed formal semantics). Adjudon's Policy Engine compiles ADL down to Cedar for production evaluation via the cedarSubstrate wrapper. The substrate choice was made per ADR-PE-07 because Cedar carries formal mathematical guarantees that hand-rolled evaluators do not. See ADL v0.1 Reference.

chainHash​

The SHA-256 link of every Decision Hash Chain row, computed as sha256(prevHash || payloadDigest || sequence || createdAt). See Audit Log & Security.

Cohen's κ​

Inter-rater agreement statistic (Cohen 1960). Computed in policyEffectivenessService as (po - pe) / (1 - pe) where po is observed agreement (engine decision vs reviewer verdict) and pe is chance agreement under independence. κ ≥ 0.6 = substantial agreement, the conventional bar for a policy that's pulling its weight. See Policy Effectiveness.

Confidence Engine​

The three-pillar score generator: base probability, variance across ensemble passes, and historical precedent. Outputs a confidenceScore (0.0–1.0) and tags like LOW_CONFIDENCE.

CRA​

The EU Cyber Resilience Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/2847). Art. 11 sets the manufacturer-reporting cadence (24h / 72h / 14d) tracked by the Multi-Clock.

D​

Decision Audit Layer​

Adjudon's product category. Sits downstream of the LLM rail; records every AI decision into a tamper-evident chain. Distinct from prompt-layer guardrails (Lakera, CalypsoAI, NeMo Guardrails).

DecisionTrace​

The per-decision record. Carries inputContext, outputDecision, confidenceScore, tags, status, and a back-reference to its HashChainEntry.

DORA​

The EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2554), enforceable since 17 January 2025. Art. 30 governs the exit-plan obligation. See DORA Compliance.

E​

eu-central-1​

AWS Frankfurt. Adjudon's primary database (MongoDB Atlas) and API server (Fly.io) both run here. See Data Residency & GDPR.

F​

Frankfurt​

Adjudon's sole residency — MongoDB Atlas, Fly.io (API + embedding sidecar), and every other sub-processor operate from eu-central-1 or another EU region. No data leaves the EU, end to end (since 2026-05-11).

FRIA​

Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment. Required under EU AI Act Art. 27 for Annex III deployers. Adjudon's FRIA model carries its own chainHash, separate from the Decision Hash Chain. See FRIA Wizard.

G​

GDPR​

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679). Adjudon is a Data Processor under Art. 28; customer is the Data Controller. See Data Residency & GDPR.

GENESIS_HASH​

The chain-start sentinel. Sixty-four zeros for the Decision Hash Chain, the literal string "0" for the Operations Audit Log; never re-keyed.

H​

HashChainEntry​

A single row in the Decision Hash Chain. Carries sequence, traceId, prevHash, payloadDigest, chainHash, and createdAt. See Hash Chain API.

I​

Idempotency-Key​

The header that lets a client retry a mutating call safely. Adjudon auto-generates one from the request payload if the client does not supply it. See Quickstart.

IncidentClock​

A regulatory deadline clock attached to an Incident. Carries a regulator enum (gdpr, aiact, dora, nis2, cra), an articleRef, and checkpoints[].

M​

MDCG 2019-11​

The Medical Device Coordination Group's guidance on the qualification and classification of software under MDR/IVDR. Rule 11 places most clinical-AI software at Class IIa or higher. See Medtech Compliance.

MDR​

The EU Medical Device Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/745). Article 10(8) sets the manufacturer-retention obligation: 10 years for non-implantable, 15 years for implantable.

Multi-Clock​

The Multi-Clock Incident Hub: five parallel regulator clocks (GDPR Art. 33, EU AI Act Art. 73, DORA Art. 19, NIS2 Art. 23, CRA Art. 11) running off one Incident. See Multi-Clock Incidents.

N​

NIS2​

EU Network and Information Security Directive 2 (Directive (EU) 2022/2555). Art. 23 sets the significant-incident reporting cadence (24h / 72h / 30d).

O​

OpenAI exception (retired 2026-05-11)​

Historical term. Until 2026-05-11, OpenAI L.L.C. (USA) was listed as a Adjudon sub-processor for Confidence Engine Pillar-3 embedding generation under GDPR Chapter V SCCs. On that date the call was migrated to a self-hosted TEI sidecar in Frankfurt and OpenAI was removed from the sub-processor list. The term is preserved in the glossary so older procurement documents that reference it can be mapped to the current state. See Sub-Processors.

P​

payloadDigest​

A trace's sha256(canonicalJson(traceView)). Computed at chain-append time and stable across soft-delete / GDPR Art. 17 nullification.

PolicyTranscript​

Per-evaluation immutable record (Phase 1 Track D) emitted by policyTranscriptService.emit every time a policy fires on a trace. Pinned to the firing PolicyVersion via policyVersionHash; the trace value of every condition that evaluated TRUE is PII-scrubbed at write time per Cardinal Rule #4; chained to the daily Merkle anchor which carries a D-Trust qSeal. The court-admissibility unit. See Policy Governance.

PolicyVersion​

Append-only versioning chain (Phase 1 Track C) for every Policy document. Each Policy update creates a new PolicyVersion with canonicalContentHash = SHA-256(JCS-canonicalised text) and priorVersionHash linking back. Mutations are rejected by Mongoose pre-hooks (Cardinal Rule #5). A regulator replaying a 2-year-old PolicyTranscript fetches the EXACT policy text in force at that moment via the version hash.

Policy Engine​

The deterministic gate that decides 201 (approve), 202 (flag for review), or 403 (block) on every trace. Priority: block > flag > notify > approve.

R​

ReviewItem​

A row on the Review Queue: a flagged decision awaiting human oversight per EU AI Act Art. 14. Linked back to its DecisionTrace by traceId.

S​

SCCs​

Standard Contractual Clauses under GDPR Chapter V. Historical relevance only: previously the legal mechanism for the OpenAI embedding transfer (retired 2026-05-11). Adjudon currently has no third-country sub-processor and no SCCs in force.

Sandbox / Scale / Governance / Enterprise / Custom​

The five Adjudon plan tiers. Hash-chain audit, Multi-Clock incidents, and the FRIA Wizard are available from Governance upward. See Plans & Features.

Shapley values​

Game-theoretic attribution of contribution (Shapley 1953). Adjudon computes EXACT Shapley over the 2^N condition subsets for policies with N ≤ 10 conditions (1024 evaluations max); for N > 10 the spike currently throws and the dashboard surfaces "Shapley unavailable" (KernelSHAP Monte-Carlo is Phase 2 D.4 scaffolding). The values are over fire-rate, not over precision — per Huang & Marques-Silva 2023 we never present per-decision Shapley as a causal explanation. See Policy Effectiveness.

SPRT (Sequential Probability Ratio Test)​

Wald 1947. Adjudon's canary-deployment decision algorithm (policyCanaryService.sprtDecision). Once both the canary AND the production-baseline cohorts have each accumulated ≥30 samples, the log-likelihood ratio is compared against two Wald bounds (A, B) to emit one of three decisions: promote (canary matches production), revert (canary worse than production within tolerance), or inconclusive (gather more samples). Mapped to UI labels accept / reject / continue. See Policy Governance.

T​

tamper-evident​

The Adjudon chain detects modification loudly via the next entry's prevHash mismatch; it does not prevent the write. The accurate phrase is tamper-evident, never tamper-proof.

TPSP​

ICT third-party service provider, per DORA Art. 3(19). Adjudon is a TPSP for any financial entity that uses it to support a critical or important function.