Skip to main content

Core Concepts

Arbiter uses a few terms deliberately.

Capability​

A capability is a service area exposed by a plugin, such as smtp or imap. Agents discover available service plugins first with info.

Operation​

An operation is an action within a capability. Operation ids use capability:operation syntax:

  • smtp:send_email
  • imap:list_messages
  • imap:get_message

Agents can inspect operation input schemas before running them.

Account​

An account is the credential and identity boundary for a service. SMTP and IMAP can both have an account named primary, but those names are related only if the operator chooses to configure them that way.

Policy​

A policy is reusable service-specific guardrail config. An account references a policy in the same service namespace:

arbiter:
  account:
    smtp:
      bot:
        policy: bot_policy
  policy:
    smtp:
      bot_policy:
        recipient_policy:
          allowed_domain_patterns:
            - example.com

Config authority​

Tool payloads do not carry transport settings, credentials, TLS options, sender identity, or arbitrary folder access. Those belong to deployment-owned config.