This page is the source of truth for Kontract terms. Docs, product copy, API fields, and code use these words with exactly these meanings. When a term drifts, fix the usage — not this page — unless the change is a deliberate product decision.
The big idea
Kontract is a PaaS framework that makes infrastructure disappear for the developer — and an onramp to Konstruct for when that ceiling is reached. Every Kontract runs on Konstruct, so outgrowing the abstraction is not a migration: you eject into the professional IDP experience that was underneath you the whole time.
Core terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Kontract | The contract: the versioned set of resources (zones, apps, characters) and API shapes that themes render. Also the brand for the whole PaaS layer. |
| Kontracts | The section in Konstruct's navigation where an organization manages its themes: install, register, launch, configure. |
| Theme | A frontend in a Git repository that implements the kontract under its own metaphor. Themes are presentation only — the backend never branches on a theme. |
| Konduit | The built-in business theme, preinstalled with every Kontract. The zero-install default experience. |
| Ship It! | The retro arcade theme — planets, rockets, and a hero. Available upstream; an admin installs it. |
| Launcher | The button in Kontracts that opens a theme with the signed-in user's session. A theme is always launched into one organization; it never selects one. |
| Eject | Leaving the theme abstraction for the full Konstruct experience. Nothing moves — the resources were Konstruct resources all along. |
Resources (the real things)
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Zone | The payment unit and isolation boundary apps ship into. Org-level truth: a zone bought in any theme is the same real infrastructure in every theme — a big planet in Ship It! is a big farm in a farm theme is a big environment in Konduit. An organization's first zone is free. |
| Band | What a zone physically is: a fixed capacity tier (small, medium, large) from the built-in catalog. Bands are defined in code; rate cards price them, administrators cannot redefine them. |
| Upgrade | A purchased capacity increment applied on top of a zone's band. |
| App | The resource unit: a repository the platform builds and serves. An app has a size (s, m, l) and either fits its zone or does not. |
| Fit rule | Summed over a zone's apps, size × replicas must stay within the zone's capacity, for CPU and memory both. Themes preview it; the platform enforces it. |
| Character | The signed-in user's cross-theme progression ledger: appearance, XP, quests, gear, loadout. XP is global — earned in one theme, visible in all. Keys are theme-namespaced. Optional: business themes ignore it. |
| Rate card | Administrator-priced SKU list for chargeback. Prices are informational; there is no payment integration. |
Distribution
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| UPSTREAM | The blessed public home of first-party themes. A static label — it names the relationship, not the vendor. |
| PLATFORM | The platform team's copy of a theme, pulled from upstream. What organizations consume. |
| ORG | An organization's own instance of a theme, pulled from the platform team. Where customization lives. |
| Provenance chip | The UPSTREAM / PLATFORM / ORG indicator on every Kontracts entry: whose copy you are looking at, and what it points back to. |
| Kontract cluster | A cluster provisioned from the Kontract cluster template: the shipping ground an organization's themes deploy apps into. Creating one is the zero-state Kontract experience. |
| Shipping ground | Informal name for a kontract cluster's role: where apps land. |
| Seeded theme | A theme the platform ensures exists (create-if-absent) so the ecosystem starts populated — Konduit is seeded everywhere. |
Authoring
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
KONTRACT.md | The manifest at a theme repository's root: version, capabilities, vocabulary. |
kontract.js | The vendored client: auth handshake, discovery, and the contract API in one small file. Copy it, keep it. |
kontract-icon.png | The theme's face, served from its root and shown in the Kontracts registry. |
| Discovery | The bootstrap document (/foreman/kontract/{org}): capabilities, band and size catalogs, rates, org identity. Themes render from it and never hardcode it. |
| Capability | A kontract area a theme declares it implements (apps, zones, shop, character, metrics). Implementing a subset is legitimate. |
| Vocabulary | The theme's mapping of contract terms to its own words (zone → planet, app → rocket, deploy → launch). |
| Single-org rule | A theme never selects an organization; it receives one from the launcher and manages only that organization's resources. |
Roles
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Platform team | Creates the shared Kubernetes resources organizations build on: kontract clusters, the curated theme set, the rate card. |
| Organization | Consumes zones, ships apps, plays themes. Owns its theme instances and its resources. |
| Theme author | Anyone — person or AI assistant — who builds a theme repository against the authoring spec. |