Glossary - Quivr

The guides use plain words first, then the name the API uses. This page maps each API name back to what it means. Core concepts shows how they fit together.

Content

Name	What it is
Organization	The owner of collections, documents and alerts. Every API key belongs to one.
Corpus	A collection of documents that you search together. It is also an access boundary for API keys.
Record	One document, such as an article, an email or a post, independent of its successive texts.
Source Namespace	A short name for where a document comes from, such as `news`. With the Record Key, it identifies the document.
Record Key	The document’s identity in its source, such as an article URL. It stays the same across corrections.
Record Version	One text of a document, as it was sent. It never changes; a correction creates a new one.
Part	A named piece of a version, such as `title`, `body` or one page of a PDF. Search results point to a Part.
Manifest	The full description of a version: its Parts, files, metadata and where they came from.
Blob	A stored file, such as an uploaded PDF, whose size and checksum Quivr verified when it was uploaded.
Idempotency key	A name your application gives each request that creates something. Repeating the request with the same key returns the same result instead of a copy.
Ingestion Receipt	Quivr’s acknowledgement of a submitted document. Read it to follow processing until the document is searchable.
Quarantine	A version a plugin could not process is kept but held out of search, with the reason, until an operator reprocesses it.
Withdrawal	Removing a document from search and alerts for good. Its versions stay readable.

Search

Name	What it is
Lexical search	Search by the words you typed.
Semantic search	Search by meaning, using vectors. It finds passages that say the same thing in other words.
Hybrid search	Both together, ranked as one list. The default.
Segment	A passage of a document, cut so it can be indexed and returned as a result.
Vector	A list of numbers computed from a passage that captures its meaning, so close meanings have close vectors.
Vector Space	All the vectors made by one embedding model in one way. Vectors from different spaces cannot be compared.
Retrieval Profile	A named way to run a search with its own time and cost budget, such as `default` or `deep`.
Projection	The search index’s copy of documents. It can always be rebuilt from stored content.

Alerts

Name	What it is
Saved Query	A saved search: what to look for and in which collections. Editing it creates a new Saved Query Version.
Subscription	An alert: it switches a Saved Query on and names the rule that decides matches. Editing it creates a new Subscription Version.
Alert rule	The plugin that decides whether a new document matches an alert, such as keyword rules or a meaning check.
Match	A stored decision that one version of a document matches one alert, with the reason. It never changes.
Owner	An identifier of one of your users attached to an alert. Quivr stores and echoes it without interpreting it.
Destination	An address of your system that receives alerts as signed webhooks. Configured by the operator.
Delivery	One notification of one match to one destination. Its attempts can repeat, so a webhook can arrive more than once.

Sources and changes

Name	What it is
Connector Instance	A source that adds documents to one collection: an RSS feed, a mailbox, an X list, or pushes from a partner.
Connector kind	The type of a source, such as `rss`, `m365_mail` or `x_list`, served by a plugin.
Change feed	The ordered list of everything that happened in your collections, which your application reads or streams.
Cursor	Your position in the change feed, so you can resume where you stopped.
Operation	A long-running task, such as rebuilding an index, that you follow until it ends.

Plugins and operation

Name	What it is
Plugin	A small web service Quivr calls for a job that depends on your content.
Contribution	One job a plugin does: a source (`connector`), a file reader (`normalizer`), text preparation (`ingestion`), ranking (`retrieval`) or an alert rule (`subscription`).
Normalizer	A plugin that reads a file format, such as PDF, and returns its text as Parts.
Pin	Telling Quivr, in its configuration, to call a given plugin version at startup.
Pipeline Plan	The current list of which plugin serves each job. Activating a plugin creates a new plan; you can roll back to the previous one.
Backfill	Computing new vectors for documents you already have, for example after choosing a new embedding model.
Space promotion	Switching search to another vector space once it is filled. Promoting the old space again switches back.
Contract Runner	`quivr plugin test`: it checks that a plugin follows the plugin protocol before you use it.