Glossary

A

Active member

An inhabitant who has accepted a handshake into a Pool, posted to it, or sent a Kindling message through it within the last 60 days. Used in Pool continuity (§9).

Archived Pool

A Pool that failed curator transition. Readable but inert — no new submissions or messages are processed. May be revived.

Asker

A person using a Kindling UI to query one or more Pools. Not a protocol actor in itself; the term is used to describe user intent in UX writing.

Auto-accept rule

A Profile-owner preference that authorizes automatic inclusion in Pools matching specified criteria (intent tags, curator verification level, visibility). Default off. Cap of five active rules per Profile. Every auto-accept event produces a notification; silent acceptance is forbidden.

B

Block list

A signed JSON document listing Kindling identities that a consumer should filter out of messaging, handshakes, or discovery. The Kindling project publishes a default list; third parties may publish their own. Schema: block_list.schema.json.

C

Charter

A Pool's free-text description of what it is for and what it is not. Required.

Consent model

The consent regime a Pool operates under. One of: universal-opt-in (default, handshake required), vouching-required, curator-only-adds. Stricter models add pre-handshake steps but never remove the owner's ability to decline or withdraw.

Consent proof

A reference, stored in a Pool entry, pointing to the handshake response that authorized the Profile's inclusion. Every entry MUST have one. Silent inclusion is forbidden.

Curator

The person (or small group) responsible for a Pool's charter, membership decisions, and conduct. Identity and verification level are visible in the manifest.

Curator transition

The 14-day process that opens when a Pool is dormant (§9). Active members nominate and vote; two-thirds support installs a new Curator.

Curator vouching

An identity verification method where a Curator attests to a Profile owner's identity, scoped to the Curator's own Pool. Does not automatically confer identity in other Pools.

D

Discovery agent

A program that reads one or more Pool manifests and answers natural-language queries against the cached profiles. Reference implementation: tools/discovery-agent/.

Dormant Pool

A Pool whose curator has been inactive for 90+ days. Triggers the curator transition process (§9).

E

Envelope

The structured outer layer of a Kindling message, carrying sender and recipient identity, message type, Pool reference, and the body. Schema: kindling_message.schema.json.

Extraction source

Per-field provenance on a parsed Profile indicating whether a value was derived from h-card markup or inferred by AI parsing. Required so downstream UIs can distinguish author-declared from inferred data.

G

Grove

(Mycelial-only term.) A rooted community inside Mycelial. Not a Kindling protocol concept. Referenced only in the Mycelial reference implementation.

H

Handshake

The consent exchange that precedes a Profile's inclusion in a Pool (§5). A handshake message is sent to the Profile's declared contact and records an explicit accept or decline. Schema: handshake_message.schema.json.

h-card

The IndieWeb microformat used as Kindling's baseline Profile schema. Parsers read h-card fields preferentially before any AI-assisted extraction.

I

Identity (Kindling identity)

An owner's verified handle within the protocol. Established via email, OAuth, or curator vouching (§4). Verification level is always visible to Askers.

Inhabitant

(Mycelial-only term.) A member of a Grove. Used in the Mycelial reference implementation; not part of the core protocol.

Intent tag

A keyword describing what a Profile owner is open to or what a Pool is for. Free-form, lowercase, hyphenated. Examples: friendship, dating, polyamorous-dating-la, hiking-buddies, co-founders.

K

Kindling message

Any protocol-level communication between two Kindling identities (handshake-request, handshake-response, intro, reply). Transport in v0.1 is email under the hood.

Kindling-noindex

A Profile-level directive declaring "do not include me in any Pool." Compliant Pools, registries, and crawlers respect it.

M

Manifest

The Pool-level JSON document declaring name, curator, charter, intent tags, visibility, consent model, and the list of entries. Schema: pool_manifest.schema.json.

Messaging preferences

A Profile owner's per-profile rules for who can message them and under what conditions. Supports identity-based gating, Pool-based filtering, and cold-message controls.

P

Parsed profile

The JSON document produced by parsing a Profile source page. Cached as a sidecar inside the Pool. Schema: parsed_profile.schema.json.

Photo hint

A URL referencing an image on the Profile's source page. Photos are never cached at the Pool level; implementations that display them handle their own caching.

Pool

A curated collection of Profiles grouped by context (city, scene, interest, relationship orientation). A Pool has a manifest, a Curator, intent tags, visibility, and a consent model.

Profile

A self-hosted page published by its owner, at a URL the owner controls. Parsed on handshake accept into a structured JSON document. The Profile source is the source of truth; the parsed version is a cached projection.

Profile owner

The person who published and controls the Profile URL. The only party who can consent to inclusion in a Pool.

R

Registry

A directory of opt-in Pools. Kindling runs one (github.com/IntelliBotique/kindling/tree/main/registry-data); third parties may run their own.

S

Submission

A Curator's act of proposing a Profile URL for inclusion in a Pool. A submission becomes an entry only after handshake accept.

V

Verification level

One of email-verified, oauth-verified, curator-vouched, or unverified. Always visible alongside a Profile in any v1-conforming UI.

Visibility

A Pool's discoverability setting. One of public, unlisted, invite-only. Does not alter the consent model — an invite-only Pool still requires handshake consent.

W

Well-known file

The /.well-known/kindling-pool JSON document a domain publishes to announce the Pools it hosts. Consumed by crawlers and registries. Schema: well_known_pool.schema.json.

Withdrawal

A Profile owner's removal of consent, processed within 60 seconds and available through the messaging channel at any time. Removes the Profile from the Pool.

Working Group

The group that will take over Kindling governance by v1.0. One Mycelial seat, two rotating independent-implementer seats, one IndieWeb seat, and a small advisory rotation. Transition begins at v0.2.