Core Concepts
Glossary
Quick reference for all Kaiten terms and concepts.
Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Organization | Top-level isolation boundary. Represents your SaaS company. All data is scoped to an organization. |
| Customer | An end client of your SaaS product. Has one or more instances. |
| Instance | A deployment of your product for a specific customer. Linked to a license. |
| License | A commercial plan (Starter, Pro, Enterprise) with a type (COMMUNITY, TRIAL, DEVELOPMENT, PAID). Defines what entitlements an instance gets. |
| Entitlement | A usage right or quota. Types: BOOLEAN (on/off), NUMBER (metered quota), CONFIG (arbitrary JSON). |
| License Entitlement | The link between a license and an entitlement, carrying a threshold value. |
| Entitlement Usage | Current consumption of a NUMBER entitlement for a specific instance. |
| Feature Flag | Runtime feature control. Types: boolean, object. Supports targeting rules and rollout strategies. |
| Variant | A possible value a feature flag can resolve to (e.g. "on", "off", or an object). |
| Targeting Rule | A CEL expression that determines which variant a flag resolves to, based on context. |
| Deployment Zone | A logical execution environment (shared or dedicated) where releases are deployed. |
| Release | A versioned bundle of components. Deployed to deployment zones. |
| Component | A versioned service or module (e.g. "api-server v2.1.0"). |
| Deployment | The act of deploying a release to a deployment zone. |
| Slug | A URL-safe identifier unique per organization. Used in API paths and dashboard URLs. |
| Service Account | A machine user that can hold API tokens for programmatic access. |
| API Token | An authentication token (ksh_*) for machine-to-machine API access. |
| Scope | A permission grant following the pattern read:module or write:module. |
| Principal | The authenticated identity (UserID, OrganizationID, Scopes) attached to every request. |
| Outbox | A transactional table (outbox_events) used to guarantee event delivery via CDC. |
| OFREP | OpenFeature Remote Evaluation Protocol — the standard API for evaluating feature flags remotely. |
| CEL | Common Expression Language — used for feature flag targeting rules. |
| Svix | Third-party managed webhook delivery platform used by Kaiten. |
| Audit Trail | Append-only log of entitlement operations per instance (feature_audit_trail table). |