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Product Terminology

Status: Draft
Version: 0.1

Sovereign Home OS

The complete independent product: a local-first platform that provides a coherent interface, AI orchestration, permissions, capabilities, and lifecycle management around user-owned services.

It is not dependent on the separate Sovereign project, even when both projects share development practices or organizational ownership.

Core Platform

The trusted services responsible for configuration, identity, permissions, capability registration, plugin lifecycle, secrets, diagnostics, and other platform-wide concerns.

AI Orchestration

The bounded process that interprets a user request, selects from registered capabilities, validates proposed inputs, invokes allowed operations, and presents results. It is not unrestricted agency over the host.

Capability

A named, typed operation exposed to platform clients and AI orchestration. A capability defines inputs, outputs, permissions, side effects, errors, and a human-readable purpose. Example: dns.stats.read.

Capability Provider

A component that implements one or more capabilities. Multiple providers may eventually implement the same capability contract.

Plugin

An independently managed package that integrates a domain or service with the platform. A plugin declares its capabilities, permissions, configuration, health, and lifecycle metadata.

Integration

The connection between Sovereign Home OS and an external or separately managed service. During the preview, the Pi-hole integration may be built into the monorepo before a general plugin lifecycle exists.

Adapter

Implementation code that translates a service-specific API into platform capability inputs, outputs, and errors.

Local-First

Core useful behavior runs on user-owned hardware and remains available without an internet connection wherever reasonably possible. Optional remote services must be explicit and replaceable.

Privacy-First

The system minimizes collection, storage, and transmission by default. Privacy is a design constraint, not a paid feature.

Preview

The first constrained proof on the project's target Raspberry Pi. It validates a complete experience but is not a production-ready public release.

Voice Satellite

A future lightweight endpoint for audio capture, playback, mute controls, and status indication. Reasoning and service integrations remain centralized on the home server.

Supported

Continuously tested, documented, and included within stated compatibility and support boundaries. Merely being technically possible does not make a configuration supported.

Local Network

The household network from which a user accesses the platform. It reduces exposure but is not automatically considered fully trusted.

Open source under AGPL-3.0. Each Sovereign instance is independently operated.