Core concepts

This page is the glossary. None of it is jargon for jargon's sake; everything here will show up in chat replies, error messages, and notifications. Skim it once and refer back when something looks unfamiliar.

Agents

A small specialist that owns one slice of your business.

• Planner — your point of contact. Routes requests; never executes them alone.
• Sales agent — leads, deals, pipeline, conversion.
• Finance agent — cashflow, expenses, runway, forecasts.
• HR / Team agent — headcount, hiring, attendance, leave.
• Process agent — inventory, defects, cycle time, capacity.
• Diagnostics agent — surfaces Red Flags across modules.
• Founder agent — founder fit, co-founder fit, PMF, ICP/IDP.

You never call an agent by name. You ask the Planner; it picks.

Workspace

The unit of isolation. One workspace = one business. Workspaces have:

• their own data, members, and roles;
• their own currency, locale, and timezone;
• their own token quota and billing.

A single user can be in multiple workspaces (e.g. you're an advisor to a side project). The current workspace is shown in the top-left of the sidebar.

Roles & permissions

Every member of a workspace has a role. Roles map to permissions like sales:write, finance:read, messaging:send. Out of the box you get:

You can create custom roles in Settings → Roles.

Chat, Form, Task, Tool

The four object types you'll meet.

• Chat — a conversation. Saved, searchable, resumable.
• Form — a small structured input the agent asks for.
• Task — long-running work with a status. Status moves over hours or days.
• Tool — an action the agent can take (send invoice, run payroll, draft email). You don't name them.

Score & Flag

• Score — a number between 0 and 100 attached to a module. Higher is better. Updates whenever data updates.
• Flag — a Red Flag. A specific, named issue with severity (🔴 High / 🟡 Medium / 🟢 Low), an owner, and a suggested fix.

Token

A unit of AI usage. Every chat reply, file analysis, and Red Flag generation consumes tokens.

• Your plan includes a monthly token quota.
• Cheap actions (a short reply) cost a fraction of a token.
• Expensive actions (a long analysis with a chart) cost more.
• Unused tokens don't roll over.

See Plans & billing → Tokens for the actual costs.

Envelope & signed context

Two words you'll only see in error messages. Glossed here so you're not surprised.

• Envelope — the per-request bundle that carries your identity, workspace, language, and role permissions to the backend.
• Signed context — the cryptographic stamp on the envelope that lets backend services trust who you are without re-checking with the gateway.

If you see an error like "signed context expired", just refresh the page. It means your session token rotated and the client needs to pick up the new one.

Outbox & idempotency

Two more terms that surface in "didn't this already happen?" situations.

• Outbox — thola's reliable event log. Every important state change (a deal moves, a payroll run starts, an invoice sends) is published to the outbox first; consumers pick it up and act.
• Idempotency key — a per-action ID that prevents the same action from happening twice. If your network drops while sending an invoice and you retry, thola uses the idempotency key to recognise the retry and not double-send.

You never set these yourself. They are mentioned only so the words don't look scary in the logs.

Offline-first

A property of the thola mobile app. The mobile POS, attendance, and project flows all keep a full local SQLite copy of your data — so the counter keeps billing even when the network drops. When the network returns, sync-v2 reconciles.

The web app is not offline-first. It expects a connection.

Conservative vs. agent-first

A workspace-level setting under Settings → Workspace → Agentic posture:

• agent-first (default) — agents proactively suggest fixes, draft replies, and pre-fill forms.
• conservative — agents wait to be asked; nothing proactive.

Switch to conservative if your team feels overwhelmed; switch back when you're ready to delegate.

That's the whole vocabulary. From here on, the guide assumes you know these words and goes deep into each module.

→ Dashboards: Overall