Glossary

Definitions for terms used throughout the Schematify documentation

A reference for terminology used across the Schematify documentation.

Agent

An AI coding assistant (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Crush, etc.) that can generate and manage Schematify graph documents. Agents interact with Schematify through the CLI and installed skill files. See AI Integration.

Agent Skill

A downloadable instruction file that teaches an AI agent how to work with Schematify. Skills cover CLI usage, graph generation workflows, interchange JSON, scanning strategies, and guardrails. See Skills.

Attribute

A key-value pair stored on a node. Render styles, reports, charts, and status bindings can read attributes.

Autocomplete

Context-aware suggestions in the search input. Suggests built-in fields, discovered attribute fields, and declared channel fields. Known values appear after : or ~ for root enum-like fields and sufficiently repeated low-cardinality string attributes, but never for realtime channels. Works inside parentheses and after logical operators.

Bookmark

A browser-local snapshot of the active filters and group expansion state for one graph. Bookmarks can be created, renamed, updated, applied, or deleted from the Bookmarks panel. They do not sync across browsers or devices. Shortcut: Ctrl+B / Cmd+B.

Canvas

The main rendering surface in the Graph Viewer where nodes, groups, connections, and status badges are displayed. Supports pan, zoom, selection, and context menu interactions.

Channel

A declaration on a node for live data such as connection count, latency, or queue depth. CLI publishing or a Scriptable Graph supplies channel values. Each channel can define a display label, a staleness threshold, and a default value. Query its resolved value explicitly with channels.<key>. See Document Format.

Centre View

Fits the entire visible graph into the viewport. Shortcut: Ctrl+Space / Cmd+Space.

CLI

The Schematify command-line tool (schematify). Used for managing graph documents (push, pull, list, delete, validate, publish, convert) and configuring your Schematify server connection. See CLI.

Compound Query

A search query combining multiple conditions with AND or OR. Parentheses bind first, followed by AND, then OR. See DSL Syntax.

Context Menu

The right-click menu on nodes and selections. Provides access to inspect, filter, group toggle, and other context-sensitive actions.

Document

A graph document in JSON or YAML format that defines nodes, relationships, attributes, and hierarchy.

Document Manager

The web application for creating, organising, editing, and opening graph documents. Its structured tree editor works over a live graph preview and provides a read-only JSON source view. See Document Manager.

DSL

Domain-Specific Language. The field-aware query language used in Schematify’s search panel for substring matching, exact equality, typed comparisons, numeric ranges, existence checks, contains, and compound expressions. Typo-tolerant matching is provided separately by free-text search. See DSL Syntax.

Exclude

A filter type that removes targeted nodes from view. Excluding a group also removes its descendant branch.

Existence Check

A DSL operator that tests whether a field is present, absent, or empty. Operators: has:, missing:, empty:.

Expand

A filter type that adds nodes to the current view without hiding anything. Brings back nodes that were hidden by previous filters.

Expand with Relations

A filter type that adds specific nodes and all their connected relations to the current view.

Filter

A rule that controls which nodes are visible on the canvas. Schematify has five filter types: Isolate, Isolate with Relations, Exclude, Expand, and Expand with Relations. Filters apply as a stack and can be created from the context menu or from search results.

Filter Stack

The ordered list of active filters. Each filter operates on the result of the ones before it, except that Isolation filters evaluate against the full unfiltered tree. Visible in the Filter panel.

Free Text Search

A search query without field specifiers. Fuzzy-matches document-backed root fields and scalar attributes, then ranks results by relevance. Realtime channel values require an explicit channels.<key> predicate.

Field Substring Match

A case-insensitive substring search on a specific field using : or ~. Both operators are identical and neither is typo-tolerant; fuzzy matching applies to free text.

Graph

A visual representation of entities (nodes) and their relationships, rendered on the canvas. A graph is loaded from a document.

Graph Viewer

The main Schematify application for interactive graph exploration. Includes the canvas, main menu, camera controls, context menu, and all navigation and filtering tools. See Interface Overview.

Group

A node that contains child nodes, forming a hierarchical structure. Groups can be expanded to show their children or collapsed to act as a summary. Status definitions can opt into bubbling through groups. See: Status Bubbling.

Hierarchy

The tree structure of parent-child relationships between nodes. A cluster might contain namespaces, which contain pods. Groups can be expanded and collapsed to navigate this structure.

Inspect Modal

A detail view showing a node’s full data, attributes, and metadata. Supports multi-node inspection with tabs for comparing attributes side by side.

Isolate

A filter type that strips the graph down to specific nodes (and their ancestors/descendants for hierarchy). Everything else disappears.

Isolate with Relations

A filter type like Isolate, but also keeps nodes connected to the targets via relations. Only considers currently visible relations.

Landing Page

The entry point to Schematify. Provides quick access to the Document Manager, documentation, quickstart guide, and CLI download.

The primary navigation in the Graph Viewer, providing access to Search, Tree, Filter, Bookmarks, Issues, and Settings panels.

Node

An entity in the graph. Each node has a label, a type, an optional status, and optional attributes. Nodes can be standalone or grouped into hierarchies.

Node Filter

A filter targeting specific nodes by their path. Created from the context menu. Static: doesn’t change if the graph data changes. Contrast with Smart Filter.

Node Status

A state indicator displayed as a coloured badge. A status definition sets its priority and whether it bubbles through groups. The status type and report data accept param bindings, so attributes, channels, or literal values can drive them.

Node Type

A classification label for a node (e.g. “server”, “database”, “service”). Searchable via the node-type field.

Path

A node’s position in the hierarchy, expressed as a slash-delimited string. Searchable via the path field.

Relation

A connection (edge) between two nodes that exists outside the parent-child hierarchy. A service in one branch of the tree can link to a database in a separate branch.

Reset View

Clears all filters and resets group expansion to defaults. Asks for confirmation before applying.

Root Field

A built-in property that exists on every node: id, label, path, node-type, node-status.type. Contrast with Attribute fields, which are user-defined.

Schema

A graph document stored on the Schematify server. The CLI uses “schema” as the term for server-side documents in commands like list, push, pull, and delete.

The search panel in the Graph Viewer. Supports free text and the full DSL. Results split into visible and hidden groups. Shortcut: Ctrl+F / Cmd+F. See Search and DSL.

Smart Filter

A filter based on a search expression rather than fixed node paths. It re-evaluates when the graph document or a resolved channel value changes, using the same rules as interactive search. Created from the search panel’s filter menu. Contrast with Node Filter.

Static Attribute

An attribute whose value is defined in the graph document and does not change unless the document is updated. Use a channel for live values.

Status Bubbling

The mechanism by which status definitions marked bubbleUp can surface through parent groups. The group displays the highest-priority result among its own status and bubble-enabled descendant statuses.

Syntax Highlighting

Colour-coded display of DSL queries in the search input. Brackets, keywords, field names, operators, quoted strings, and values each have distinct colours that adapt to the active theme.

Tree Panel

A panel in the main menu showing the graph as a navigable hierarchy. Supports three view modes: all nodes, selected nodes only, or filtered nodes only.

Undo / Redo

Reverses or re-applies filter and group-state changes recorded in the current viewer history. Undo: Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z. Redo: Ctrl+Shift+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y / Cmd+Y).

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