One-line definitions with pointers to the canonical section. When a term is defined in detail elsewhere in the spec kit, the definition here is the short form and the pointer is authoritative.
vCon — Virtual Conversation. An IETF-standardized container object for the content, metadata, and analyses of a conversation. See speckit §vCon Data Model.
dialog — A single conversation segment: a recording, text, transfer, or incomplete. The array in a vCon can hold many dialogs, and cross-dialog linkage is expressed via transfer dialogs. See speckit §Dialog Object.
party — A participant in one or more dialogs. Identified by tel, sip, mailto, did, or uuid; may also carry name, validation, location. See speckit §Party Object.
analysis — Machine-produced output derived from one or more dialogs (transcript, summary, sentiment, translation, etc.). MUST include vendor. See speckit §Analysis Object.
attachment — Out-of-band data associated with a vCon, party, or dialog (documents, tags, lawful-basis records). purpose, party, and dialog are required. See speckit §Attachment Object.
tags — Key-value metadata stored as an attachment with purpose: "tags" and JSON-encoded body. Use party: 0, dialog: 0 for vCon-level tags. See speckit §Tags Convention.
redacted — A pointer on a vCon indicating it is a less-detailed derivative of a prior vCon (e.g. PII stripped for LLM processing). Mutually exclusive with amended.
amended — A pointer on a vCon indicating it extends a prior vCon (e.g. appending new analysis). Mutually exclusive with redacted. History: vcon-lib (≤ v0.9.0) and vcon-mcp originally used the legacy name appended; both have since renamed to the spec name. vcon-mcp keeps the legacy column as deprecated for back-compat. See SPEC_COMPLIANCE_ISSUES.md (Closed).
content_hash — Integrity hash for externally referenced content. Format: sha512- + Base64Url of the SHA-512 digest. Required whenever url is used.
extension — A named set of additional fields or semantics layered on top of core vCon. Listed in the top-level extensions array. See speckit §Extension System.
critical extension — An extension listed in the critical array. Implementations that do not support a critical extension MUST refuse to process the vCon. History: vcon-lib (≤ v0.9.0) and vcon-mcp originally used the legacy name must_support; both have since renamed to the spec name. vcon-mcp keeps the legacy column as deprecated for back-compat. See SPEC_COMPLIANCE_ISSUES.md (Closed).
UUIDv8 — Version 8 UUID (timestamp-based with FQHN hash). Preferred UUID format for vCons. See speckit §UUID Convention.
ISO 8601 — Timestamp format used throughout the spec. MUST include timezone (Z or explicit offset). See speckit §Timestamp Convention.
link — A stateless processor in vcon-server that reads a vCon from Redis, modifies it, and writes it back. Implements async def run(vcon_uuid, link_config) -> str | None. See speckit §Processing Link Development.
chain — An ordered sequence of links executed against an ingested vCon. Configured per-deployment in pipeline YAML.
ingress — The entry point where external sources (SIPREC, audio files, screen captures, fax) become vCons. Handled by adapters.
adapter — A service that watches a source (file system, SIP recorder, screen/audio capture) and produces vCons on the ingress side. See speckit §Adapters (Ingress Pattern).
redaction — The process of producing a redacted copy of a vCon with PII stripped before sending to external LLM providers. Original is preserved.
DLQ — Dead Letter Queue. Redis queue where fatally errored vCons are pushed for manual review; non-fatal errors return None to stop the chain instead.
VconRedis — Python helper in vcon-server providing get_vcon() / set_vcon() over Redis-backed vCon storage.
Conserver — Colloquial name for vcon-server (the conversation-server processing pipeline).
MCP tool — A named tool exposed by vcon-mcp via Model Context Protocol. Input validated with Zod; errors returned via McpError. See speckit §vcon-mcp MCP Tools.
SIPREC — SIP Recording (RFC 7866). The metadata/media format emitted by carrier session recorders; ingested by vcon-siprec-adapter.
STIR/SHAKEN — Telephony caller-ID authentication framework. stir on a Party carries a PASSporT JWS Compact token.
PASSporT — Persona Assertion Token (RFC 8225). Signed assertion binding a caller identity to an originating call.
PIDF-LO — Presence Information Data Format — Location Object. Format for gmlpos location on a Party.
GEOPRIV — IETF geographic privacy WG convention. civicaddress on a Party uses GEOPRIV field names (country, a1, a2, …).
lawful basis — GDPR lawful-basis extension (draft-howe-vcon-lawful-basis). Carries consent / legal-obligation metadata. See speckit §Lawful Basis Extension.
WTF — World Transcription Format. Compact transcription schema produced by vcon-mac-wtf, wtf-server, speechmatics-link, and the wtf-transcript-converter. See speckit §WTF Extension.
JWS — JSON Web Signature. A signed vCon is wrapped as JWS General JSON Serialization.
JWE — JSON Web Encryption. An encrypted vCon is a JWE whose plaintext is a signed vCon.
Zod — TypeScript schema validator used in vcon-mcp for MCP tool input validation.
base64url — URL-safe base64 (no padding). Encoding for binary inline content in body.