| AceTeam Network | The secure mesh network connecting all nodes. Uses encrypted tunnels for end-to-end communication between nodes without exposing them to the public internet. |
| Citadel | The CLI agent that runs on your hardware. It connects the machine to the AceTeam Network, manages AI inference services, and processes jobs from the control plane. |
| Nexus | The coordination server that manages the distributed network. Handles node registration, authentication, and network topology. Hosted at nexus.aceteam.ai. |
| Node | A physical or virtual machine running the Citadel agent. Nodes contribute compute resources (CPU, GPU, memory) to the fabric. |
| Fabric | The distributed compute infrastructure formed by all connected nodes. The Sovereign Compute Fabric enables AI workloads to run across user-owned hardware. |
| Manifest | The citadel.yaml file that declares a node's identity (name, tags, organization) and the services it runs. Generated by citadel init. |
| Worker | The job processing mode activated by citadel work. Consumes tasks from a Redis Streams queue, dispatches them to handlers, and reports results. |
| Handler | A pluggable component that processes a specific type of job (e.g., LLM inference, shell command, model download). Handlers are registered with the worker and matched by job type. |
| Service | A Docker container running an AI inference engine. Supported services include vLLM, Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio, and Extraction. |
| Device Authorization | The OAuth 2.0 device flow used to register nodes with the AceTeam Network. The CLI displays a one-time code that the user enters at aceteam.ai/device to approve the connection. |
| Authkey | A pre-generated, single-use key for non-interactive node registration. Used in automation and CI/CD pipelines as an alternative to device authorization. |
| Heartbeat | A periodic status report (every 30 seconds) that nodes send to the control plane, containing system metrics, service status, and node metadata. |
| Control Plane | The cloud-hosted AceTeam platform that manages the fabric. It dispatches jobs, monitors nodes, and provides the web dashboard. |
| Provisioning | The process of installing system dependencies (Docker, GPU drivers) on a fresh server via citadel init --provision. |