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Glossary
The precise meaning of every term in Token Controller. The product and these docs use these words, and only these.
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Attribute
Account
Reference
The two sides
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Token entry | One agent session's account of what it spent and on what work: tokens, cost, model, time range and a one-line summary. It is to a token sheet what a time entry is to a timesheet. Not: Receipt, report item, line item, usage record, voucher |
| Bill | A provider's figure for one period: gross, discount, credit and net. It is the total the token entries must add up to. Not: Statement, invoice |
| Token sheet | One agent manager's token entries for one cadence period that were not reported automatically. It is the only way usage that exists on a person's machine reaches the organization. Not: Report, batch |
| Automatic | Said of a token entry the agent reports itself, with no person involved: cloud agents, CI agents, support agents. Automatic token entries are never on a token sheet. Not: Live |
| Cost sheet | The locked account of one closed period for the whole organization: cost per project and ticket, adding up to the bill. With approval on, it holds approved cost only. Not: Statement, close sheet, monthly report |
| Pass-through | An organization charging a client for the cost on its cost sheet. Token Controller ends at the cost sheet; what the client is invoiced is outside it. Not: Chargeback, rebilling, invoicing |
| Provider | A company that charges for model usage, such as Anthropic, OpenAI or a cloud marketplace. Not: Vendor |
| Cost source | One way a provider charges an organization: subscription, seat, usage at API rates, API key, cloud marketplace or reseller. |
| Reconciliation | Checking, per period, that postings plus unattributed plus residual equal the bill. Not: Matching |
| Residual | The part of a bill that no token entry explains. Always shown as its own line. Not: Leftover, difference |
Where cost sits
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Posting | The placement of a token entry, or a share of it, on one cost object with one cost kind. Not: Allocation, assignment |
| Cost center | A node of the team tree that collects cost: a person, a team, a department or the organization. Every posting lands on exactly one person, its agent manager, and rolls up from there. Not: Who, person side |
| Cost object | The work a cost paid for: a ticket, a project or the organization. Ticket cost rolls up to its parent ticket and its project. Not: What, work side |
| Cost kind | The label on a posting that says how it relates to work: direct, project overhead, organization overhead, personal or unattributed. Not: Category, cost type |
| Direct | Cost placed on a ticket. |
| Project overhead | Project cost that belongs to no single ticket, such as research or setup. |
| Organization overhead | Cost that belongs to no project, such as internal tooling. |
| Personal | A person's own learning and experiments. |
| Unattributed | Spend that no rule or person has placed yet. Always shown as its own line. Not: Unassigned, unallocated, other |
| Attribution | The share of spend placed on tickets and projects, as a percentage of the total. Not: Coverage, allocation rate |
| Attribution target | The attribution an organization aims for. |
Work
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Organization | One customer of Token Controller: its people, teams, projects and periods. Not: Account, tenant, workspace, company, client |
| Project | A body of work made of tickets. |
| Client | A label on a project that names who the work is for. Projects with the same client can be totalled. Not: Customer, account |
| Ticket | Any unit of work: a feature, a story, an epic or a bug. Tickets can sit inside other tickets. Not: Issue, task, story, work item |
People
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Person | A human in the organization. A person belongs to one team at a time. Not: User, developer |
| Team | A node in the team tree: a team, a department or the whole organization. Not: Group |
| Team tree | The organization's people arranged as person, team, department, organization. Not: Org chart, hierarchy |
| Member | Anyone in the organization, whatever their role. Not: User, seat |
| Agent manager | The role that manages agents: submits token sheets and sees its own cost. Every token entry has exactly one agent manager, who answers for its cost. Not: Member, supervisor, owner, orchestrator, prompter, developer |
| People manager | The role that manages people and projects: reads reports, sets token budgets and cadence, and approves or rejects token entries, for the teams or projects it is assigned. A people manager is also an agent manager. Not: Manager |
| Controller | The role that sees everything, runs the close and posts adjustments. Not: Owner, admin |
| Assignee | The person a ticket is assigned to. Not: Ticket owner |
Agents
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Agent | Anything that calls a model and so costs money. Token Controller keeps no record of agents, only of the cost they cause: every token entry comes from exactly one agent session. Not: Bot, tool |
| Agent harness | The product an agent ran on, such as Claude Code or Codex, carried on every token entry. |
| Agent name | An optional label on a token entry that says which agent produced it, such as "review bot". Token entries with the same agent name can be totalled. |
| Model | The model that did the work in a token entry. Together with the provider it decides the price. |
| Subagent | An agent started by another agent inside the same session. |
| Session | One continuous run of an agent, from start to end. Not: Conversation, chat |
| Segment | A stretch of a session on one branch and one working directory. |
| Transcript | The full text of a session. It never leaves the machine. |
| Summary | The one line an agent writes about what a session did. It is the only text in a token entry. |
| Telemetry event | One model call as reported live by the agent: tokens, cost and IDs, no text. |
| Door | A way token entries or telemetry reach Token Controller: session files, telemetry push, the GitHub Action or the token entries endpoint. Not: Integration, connector |
Placing token entries
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Signal | A fact about a session that hints at its cost object: branch, working directory, repository, pull request, or a ticket key in a prompt. |
| Rule | An instruction that turns signals into postings. Organization rules run before personal ones. Not: Filter, mapping |
| Classifier | An optional program on a person's machine that picks among candidate tickets when rules cannot. |
| Report | A view people managers read, such as token budget versus actual per project. Not: Dashboard |
| Review | An agent manager checking their own draft token entries before submitting the token sheet. |
| Submit | Handing in a token sheet for its cadence period. Not: Push, sync, upload |
| Late | Said of a token sheet whose cadence period is over and that has not been submitted. |
| Approval | A people manager accepting submitted token entries. An organization can switch approval off. With approval on, a period cannot be closed while a token entry in it is unapproved. Not: Sign-off, posted |
| Status | Where a token entry stands: draft (still on the machine), submitted (counts in reports), approved, rejected (does not count until fixed) or locked (its period is closed). Automatic token entries start at submitted. |
| Reject | A people manager sending a token entry back to its agent manager with a reason. Not: Decline, return |
| Cadence | The rhythm in which token sheets are due, set by a people manager: weekly, every two weeks, monthly or custom. Not: Reporting cadence, schedule |
Money
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Reported cost | The cost figure an agent supplies with its own token entry. It is optional. |
| List value | A token entry's cost at the provider's published prices: the reported cost where there is one, otherwise token counts times the price table for the model. Not: Estimated cost |
| Billed value | A token entry's cost as the provider actually charged it, where a bill or billed telemetry says so. Not: Actual cost |
| Price table | The published prices per model used to compute list value. Each period keeps the table it was closed with. |
| Unknown model | A model missing from the price table. Its cost is labelled, never shown as zero. |
Time
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Period | One calendar month, open or closed. Not: Billing cycle, month |
| Cadence period | One stretch of the cadence, such as one week. Each has one token sheet per agent manager. |
| Close | Locking a period so its token entries and postings can no longer change. It produces the cost sheet. Not: Month-end, lock |
| Adjustment | A signed correction a controller posts to a closed period. |
Management control
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Token budget | Money a human has planned for a person, a ticket, a project or a period. It is compared with actual cost and never stops spending. Not: Budget, limit, cap, allowance |
| Token forecast | Money Token Controller predicts for a ticket, a project or a period from past cost. It becomes a token budget only when a person accepts it. Not: Forecast, estimate, prediction |
| Actual | What was spent against a token budget. |
| Overrun | Actual above token budget. |
| Underrun | Actual below token budget. |
| Outlier | A cost far from the organization's own baseline for similar work. Not: Anomaly |
Plans
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Team plan, Enterprise plan | Always written with the word "plan", because team is a node of the team tree and both are also plan names at providers. |
Last updated 8 October 2026 · Edit this page
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