- Pask
- The signed system of record for automated work on a multi-vendor site. It watches authorized activity and produces one signed record per engagement: a witness, not a vault.
- Site Charter
- The signed founding document for a site: who and where it is, what its policies allow, and when its authority expires. Every other Pask artifact derives from it.
- Mesh Contract
- A signed contract each participant (robot, sensor, service, or person) publishes to be admitted to a site: declaring up front what it is and what it is allowed to do.
- Conversation Template
- A pre-approved script for a kind of engagement: which actor may do what, under which policy, and what approval it needs before it runs.
- Engagement
- A bounded, approved unit of work, which may contain many robot actions. One receipt per engagement.
- Engagement Receipt
- One sealed, signed record of a single engagement: who acted, what happened, when, and under whose approval. It verifies on its own, without calling Pask.
- validator
- A signer role in the receipt chain: the participant that attests the engagement stayed within site policy before the record is sealed.
- reviewer
- A signer role in the receipt chain: the independent participant that countersigns a sealed receipt so a third party can trust it later.
- Approval
- The first signer (0) on a receipt: the accountable party who authorized the engagement, citing the Charter section and policy it runs under.
- Seal
- The final signer (3) on a receipt: the Pask appliance commits to the finished record's fingerprint, closing it forever. Any later change breaks the seal.
- teachback
- A conformance check where the participant demonstrates its declared behavior back to the site: proving the contract describes the real device, not just paperwork.
- CL-1Conformance Level 1
- The lowest Mesh Contract grade: the contract is schema-valid, well-formed and complete, but not yet independently exercised.
- CL-2Conformance Level 2
- A middle Mesh Contract grade: the participant backs its declared behavior with signed telemetry, checked against its actual signals, not just paperwork.
- CL-3Conformance Level 3
- The highest Mesh Contract grade: the participant's evidence is bound to a hardware TEE attestation (RATS), so its identity and measurement are proven, not just asserted.
- COSECBOR Object Signing and Encryption
- An IETF standard (RFC 9052) for compact, signed data objects. Pask uses it as the envelope format for a sealed receipt.
- SCITTSupply Chain Integrity, Transparency and Trust
- The IETF standard for signed, independently-verifiable transparency receipts (architecture RFC 9943, receipts RFC 9942, 2026). Pask is designed to adopt it rather than invent a proprietary receipt format.
- CBORConcise Binary Object Representation
- A compact binary data format (RFC 8949): like JSON, but smaller and unambiguous, so a hash of it is stable.
- Ed25519
- A fast, widely-trusted elliptic-curve digital signature scheme (RFC 8032). One of the two signatures on a Pask receipt.
- ML-DSA-65Module-Lattice Digital Signature Algorithm
- A post-quantum digital signature standardized by NIST (FIPS 204, based on 'Dilithium'). Added alongside Ed25519 so receipts survive future quantum attacks.
- FIPS 204
- The NIST standard that defines ML-DSA, the post-quantum signature scheme Pask pairs with Ed25519.
- SHA-256
- A cryptographic hash function that turns any data into a fixed fingerprint. Change one byte and the fingerprint changes. That is how tampering is caught.
- RFC 3161
- The internet Time-Stamp Protocol: a trusted authority signs 'this data existed at this time,' so a receipt's timestamp can be proven independently.
- canonicalization
- Serializing data into one agreed byte order (keys sorted, no ambiguity) so that everyone who hashes the same record computes the same fingerprint.
- proposed_plan_hash
- The SHA-256 fingerprint of the proposed plan that the Approval signer commits to. The plan itself is committed by hash, never embedded in the receipt.
- seal_input_hash
- The SHA-256 fingerprint of the receipt body that the Seal signer commits to. Recompute it yourself from the receipt: if it doesn't match, the record was altered.
- prior_receipt_hash
- Each receipt carries the fingerprint of the receipt before it, chaining them in order. Remove or alter one and every later link stops matching.
- nil hash
- All zeros: the placeholder a site's very first (genesis) receipt carries in prior_receipt_hash, because there is nothing before it to chain to.
- alg_suite
- The receipt field naming which signature algorithms sealed it. Suite 2 = Ed25519 plus post-quantum ML-DSA-65, side by side.
- nonce
- A fresh random number used exactly once in a challenge, so a proof can't be replayed from an earlier session.
- attestation
- Hardware-backed proof of what code is running and where: the appliance demonstrating, cryptographically, that it is the real thing in a genuine secure environment.
- RATSRemote ATtestation procedureS
- An IETF architecture (RFC 9334) for proving, remotely, that a system is running trustworthy software on trustworthy hardware.
- TEETrusted Execution Environment
- A hardware-isolated part of a processor where code and data are protected even from the operating system: where the Pask appliance guards its keys.
- SEV-SNPSecure Encrypted Virtualization, Secure Nested Paging
- A hardware technology for a Trusted Execution Environment. It encrypts and isolates a workload's memory and can attest that isolation held.
- VCVerifiable Credential
- A W3C standard for a tamper-evident digital credential whose issuer and claims can be checked without contacting the issuer.
- DIDDecentralized Identifier
- A W3C standard for an identifier a subject controls itself, resolvable without a central registry, used to name participants durably.
- PAdES-LTVPDF Advanced Electronic Signatures, Long-Term Validation
- A European standard (ETSI EN 319 142) for PDF signatures that stay verifiable for years, even after certificates expire.
- QTSPQualified Trust Service Provider
- Under EU eIDAS, an accredited provider whose electronic signatures and timestamps carry legal weight across the EU.
- eIDASelectronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services
- The EU regulation governing electronic identity, signatures, and timestamps: the legal frame that makes a Qualified timestamp binding.
- BIPABiometric Information Privacy Act
- Illinois' biometric-privacy law (740 ILCS 14). On sites that capture no biometrics there is no BIPA exposure by construction.
- FRE 902(13)/(14)Federal Rules of Evidence 902(13) and 902(14)
- The federal rules that let a machine-generated record, or data verified by a digital process, be self-authenticating with a certification, so it can come in without live witness testimony. A Pask receipt is built to support this; treatment is a call for your own counsel.
- AGPLv3GNU Affero General Public License v3
- An open-source license: run and self-host freely: its share-alike terms attach only if you offer a modified Pask to third parties as a network service.
- EU AI Act
- The EU's regulation on AI systems. Its Annex III lists 'high-risk' uses that carry record-keeping duties a Pask receipt helps satisfy.
- AMRAutonomous Mobile Robot
- A robot that navigates a site on its own: a common participant on the multi-vendor floors Pask coordinates.
- 3PLThird-Party Logistics
- A firm a site outsources warehousing and fulfillment to: one candidate to operate the Pask layer on a site's behalf.
- OEMOriginal Equipment Manufacturer
- The company that builds a robot or device: the vendor whose fleet joins a site under a Mesh Contract.
- ROS 2Robot Operating System 2
- The open robot middleware standard widely used across modern robotics: the plumbing a vendor's own stack often speaks internally.
- OPC UAOpen Platform Communications Unified Architecture
- The standard industrial devices (sensors, PLCs, fixed equipment) use to publish their data: how non-robot participants speak.
- Spoliation
- Losing or destroying evidence you should have preserved once a lawsuit is foreseeable. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), a US court can sanction a party for lost electronic records.
- Rule 37(e)Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e)
- The US federal rule on lost electronic evidence: if records that should have been preserved for litigation are lost, courts can impose sanctions, up to an adverse-inference instruction.
- ESIElectronically Stored Information
- The electronic records (logs, sensor data, video) that US civil litigation runs on. Robot ESI is volatile: it can be overwritten within hours of an incident.
- FNOLFirst Notice of Loss
- The first report to an insurer that a loss happened: the moment a claim file opens. A sealed receipt means the evidence arrives with the FNOL instead of being reconstructed later.
- Subrogation
- After paying a claim, the insurer's right to recover from whoever actually caused the loss. On a multi-vendor site that requires proving whose robot or action did it.
- General Duty Clause
- OSHA's catch-all: employers must keep the workplace free of recognized hazards. With no robot-specific OSHA standard, robot incidents are cited under this and existing machine rules.
- LOTOLockout/Tagout (29 CFR 1910.147)
- The OSHA standard for de-energizing machines before people work on them: one of the existing rules OSHA applies to robot cells today.
- MGAManaging General Agent
- An insurance agency with delegated authority from a carrier to underwrite, price, and bind policies in a specialty class. MGAs are the standard vehicle for launching classes the admitted market does not write yet.
- GLGeneral Liability
- The broad commercial policy covering third-party injury and property damage. Robotics exposure usually rides on GL or property class codes today because no dedicated robotics class exists.
- NAICNational Association of Insurance Commissioners
- The standard-setting body for US state insurance regulators. Its Managing General Agents Act, adopted by most states, is the regulatory scaffolding MGAs operate under.
- LAELoss-Adjustment Expense
- What it costs a carrier to investigate and settle a claim, separate from the loss itself. Reconstruction-heavy claims push LAE up and eat a program's margin.
- Cedent
- The insurer that passes (cedes) part of its risk to a reinsurer. A cedent that can prove the shape of its book gets better treaty terms.
- Treaty
- A standing reinsurance agreement covering a whole book of policies rather than one risk at a time. Treaty underwriters price the book's shape, so provable exposure matters.
- STHSigned Tree Head
- The transparency log's signed summary: the Merkle root, tree size, and a signature over both. Verifying a receipt's inclusion proof against the STH proves the log committed to it.
- Surplus lines
- The market for risks the standard admitted market will not write, served by specialty carriers under lighter rate-and-form regulation. New classes typically start here.
- Tamper-evident
- Any change after sealing is detectable: edit a field and the signatures and hashes stop verifying. Not unchangeable; changes cannot hide.
- outcome_state
- The receipt field recording how the engagement ended: completed, partial, or aborted, with compliance profiles adding extension values.
- WRITE_ONLY
- The adapter mode: Pask writes sealed records into the ops or claims systems you already run and reads nothing back. A property of the outbound adapter, not of receipts.
- NIST AI RMFNIST AI Risk Management Framework
- The US reference framework for managing AI risk (voluntary). Its Govern function expects AI incidents and decisions to be recorded and traceable: show, not just say.