Glossary

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 attached to a node. Attributes can be labels shown on a node’s face, values used in reports or charts, or metrics feeding status indicators. See also: Static Attribute, Dynamic Attribute.

Autocomplete

Context-aware suggestions in the search input. Suggests built-in and discovered attribute fields, plus known values after : or ~ for root enum-like fields and sufficiently repeated low-cardinality string attributes. Works inside parentheses and after logical operators.

Bookmark

A named snapshot of your current graph state, including active filters and group expansion. Bookmarks are stored per-document and can be created, renamed, updated, or deleted from the Bookmarks panel. 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 that defines a slot for realtime data. Channels specify what live data a node expects (e.g. connection count, latency, queue depth) without holding a value themselves. Values arrive over the wire at runtime from the data pipeline. Each channel can define a display label, a staleness threshold, and a default value. 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

A dedicated web application for creating, organising, editing, and launching graph documents. Includes a JSON editor with live preview. 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.

Dynamic Attribute

An attribute whose value flows through the real-time data pipeline rather than being stored in the graph document. Dynamic attributes represent current state (e.g. live CPU usage, health status) and are transient. Contrast with Static Attribute.

Exclude

A filter type that removes specific nodes from view. Everything else stays visible. The inverse of Isolate.

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 across all node fields (label, id, path, type, attributes) and ranks results by relevance.

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 from child nodes bubbles up to the collapsed parent. 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.

Main Menu

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

MCP

Model Context Protocol. A standard for exposing tools to AI agents over stdio. Some AI agent harnesses use MCP for tool integration.

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 on a node (e.g. healthy, warning, error) displayed as a coloured badge. Status has a priority level and bubbles up through the hierarchy. The status type and its report data accept param bindings, allowing them to be driven by live channel data, static attributes, or literal values.

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.

Search

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 changes, using the same rules as interactive search. Live channel values do not appear in 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 doesn’t change unless the document is updated. Labels, descriptions, and fixed metadata are static. Contrast with Dynamic Attribute.

Status Bubbling

The mechanism by which the highest-priority status among a group’s children surfaces on the parent group. An error anywhere in the subtree is visible on the collapsed parent without expanding it.

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 the most recent action. Undo: Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z. Redo: Ctrl+Shift+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y / Cmd+Y).