Glossary

A continuity layer is the part of an AI system that carries forward governed state across sessions, tools, and models: what is currently true, what changed, why it changed, and which evidence supports it. It sits above memory and retrieval, and below agent execution, turning stored history into usable, auditable continuity.

A session-bound assistant: you type, it answers. Unless a memory feature is added, the conversation ends with the session. The first rung of the continuity staircase.

Software that uses tools to carry out tasks and workflows — not just replying, but acting: calling APIs, running steps, making changes. Distinct from a stateful agent runtime (see Stateful agents), which is about carrying state within a single task.

The store of facts, preferences, and records a system keeps so it doesn’t start from nothing each time. What is stored — distinct from which stored facts are currently true (see Governed state).

The working information a system has in view right now, for this specific request. What is relevant this call — narrower than persistent context, and distinct from what is currently true.

The current condition of a user, workflow, task, or process — what persists between steps and sessions. Distinct from governed state, which adds provenance and write-governance on top.

The record of where a piece of information came from, when it changed, and whether it can be trusted.

The property of carrying a project’s understanding forward across sessions, tools, agents, and models — not just storing it, but keeping it current, reasoned, and auditable.

The implementation of a continuity layer: the machinery that governs writes, tracks provenance, supersedes stale facts, and reconstructs the current account of the work.

The execution environment where a continuity engine governs interactions between a user and a model, tool, or agent before state is carried forward.

Agent runtimes and frameworks that carry state across steps and tool calls within a task. Necessary for continuity but scoped to a single task — distinct from state that survives a handoff to another agent, tool, or person.

Context — what a model sees in a given call — made to outlive a single session. Adjacent to continuity, but still about what is relevant to retrieve, not about which facts are currently true.

The rules that decide what may be written to memory, by whom, and how a changed fact is retired. It is the part still underdeveloped in most memory systems: governance of writes.

Memory that tracks two independent time axes — valid time (when a fact is true in the world) and record time (when the system learned it) — so it can answer both what is true now and what it believed, and when.

The ordered trail a fact leaves when it changes: each version is closed off and points to what replaced it, with a reason attached, instead of being silently overwritten or deleted.

The authoritative current answer a continuity layer maintains — every write passing through a contract, and every fact able to show the lineage behind it.