---
title: "System glossary"
description: "The words opsinjs uses about itself are rung, axis, role, base, style and preset. Each has one definition and the page that owns it."
url: "https://opsinjs.pensievelabs.org/reference/system-glossary"
source: "https://opsinjs.pensievelabs.org/reference/system-glossary.md"
section: "Reference"
kind: "reference"
reviewed: "2026-09-02"
reviewer: "engineering"
aliases: ["rung", "base vs style", "what is a ladder", "system vocabulary"]
---
> Elements written as `` below are opsinjs documentation
> components. Their attributes are the content: the values they render are
> generated from `tokens/*.json` and `registry/catalogue.ts` and are
> published separately at https://opsinjs.pensievelabs.org/r/index.json and under the Reference
> section.
> Nothing is missing from this page. The data simply does not live in
> the prose.
This is the vocabulary of the **system**, not of health. If you are looking for
*HbA1c*, *reference range* or *systolic*, you want the
[Plain-English A to Z](../content/plain-english-a-z.mdx), which is written for
readers of your app rather than builders of it. The two glossaries never define
the same word; where a word genuinely has two meanings, both are listed here
with the disambiguation spelled out. The one that bites is `status`.
## How this is generated [#how-this-is-generated]
It is not, and this is the only page in Reference that is hand-written on
purpose. A project's terms of art have no machine-readable source: they exist in
prose, and a generator that scraped them from headings would produce a list of
headings, not a glossary. Inventing a `tokens/system-glossary.json` so that this
page could claim to be generated would add a file nobody maintains and a
provenance claim that means nothing.
What *is* enforced is the other half of the rule: every term below names the page
that owns its definition, and `assert-ia.mts` treats a term whose owning page has
disappeared as a broken cross-reference. A definition here may summarise; it may
never contradict.
| Term | What it means | Owned by |
| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **alias** | A search synonym declared in a page's frontmatter. Aliases are indexed, emitted into `llms.txt` and into `/r/index.json`, and are globally unique across the corpus. | [Catalogue](./generated/catalogue.mdx) |
| **axis** | One of the two independent colour dimensions. The **status axis** carries clinical urgency; the **category axis** carries subject identity. They never combine on one element. | [The two colour axes](../health/two-colour-axes.mdx) |
| **base** | A behaviour implementation of a component. It is the React code. `base` is the only base that exists; the segment is in the URL of every machine surface so that adding a second one is additive rather than a migration. | [Namespaces](../registry/namespaces.mdx) |
| **catalogue** | The single declared list of every component id, with its category, status and aliases. `registry/catalogue.ts` is its only definition. | [Catalogue](./generated/catalogue.mdx) |
| **category** | A subject area a value belongs to. This is the identity axis. A category colour says what a number is about; it never says how worried to be. | [Category identity](../health/category-identity.mdx) |
| **chrome** | The documentation site's own interface: sidebar, header, search. Themed with lyra, deliberately unlike the product theme. | [Lyra and the docs chrome](../theming/lyra-and-the-docs-chrome.mdx) |
| **doctrine** | A rule page that constrains components rather than describing one. The doctrine pages are everything under Health, Accessibility and Content & language. Doctrine names the components it governs; components name the doctrine that governs them. | [Health](../health/index.mdx) |
| **foundation** | A cross-cutting system layer with tokens of its own: colour, materials, motion, typography, shape, space, and the rest. | [Foundations](../foundations/index.mdx) |
| **generated marker** | The comment pair `opsinjs:generated:begin` / `opsinjs:generated:end`. Content between them is written by a script and is erased on the next run. | [Reference](./index.mdx) |
| **ladder** | An ordered set of surface treatments where position carries meaning. These are the six material rungs. Distinct from a *scale*, whose steps are sizes rather than meanings. | [The ladder](../foundations/materials/the-ladder.mdx) |
| **namespace** | The `@opsinjs` prefix a consumer registers in `components.json` so that `npx shadcn add @opsinjs/result-card` resolves here. | [Namespaces](../registry/namespaces.mdx) |
| **pillar** | A top-level group in the sidebar. Sixteen exist; a page belongs to exactly one. | [Reading these docs](../start/reading-these-docs.mdx) |
| **preset** | A complete theme expressed as values rather than code. Those values are the token overrides that turn the system a particular colour. | [Preset codes](../registry/preset-codes.mdx) |
| **preset code** | The short opaque string, `opsinjs-*`, that encodes a preset for a URL or a CLI flag. Decodable, versioned, and not a secret. | [Preset codes](../registry/preset-codes.mdx) |
| **product theme** | The theme opsinjs components render under: squircle corners, `system-ui`, generous spacing. Every `/view` route and every component preview uses it. The docs chrome does not. | [Lyra and the docs chrome](../theming/lyra-and-the-docs-chrome.mdx) |
| **ramp** | A perceptually even series of steps generated from one colour in OKLCH, clamped for gamut and checked for contrast. Each axis colour has one. | [How the engine works](../foundations/colour/how-the-engine-works.mdx) |
| **recipe** | A task-shaped page: components plus tokens plus copy rules for one job, in one scroll. | [Recipes](../recipes/index.mdx) |
| **registry item** | The JSON document describing one distributable unit in the shadcn registry schema. It covers the unit's files, dependencies and target paths. Served from `/r`. | [registry-item.json](../registry/registry-item-json.mdx) |
| **role** | A semantic colour slot filled by a ramp step. The four roles are surface, line, ink and accent. Components consume roles; they never consume ramp steps directly. | [Colour roles](../foundations/colour/colour-roles.mdx) |
| **rung** | One step of the material ladder, identified by its position in the stacking order rather than by a blur radius. | [The ladder](../foundations/materials/the-ladder.mdx) |
| **scale** | An ordered set of sizes named by intent rather than by t-shirt size. The scales are type, space and radius. | [Token architecture](../foundations/token-architecture.mdx) |
| **screen** | A whole-screen specimen: several components under one layout, used to show what the parts do together. | [Screens](../screens/index.mdx) |
| **status (clinical)** | One of the four ordinal levels describing a value's relationship to what is expected for a person. The four are steady, watch, attention and urgent. | [Clinical status semantics](../health/clinical-status-semantics.mdx) |
| **status (release)** | One of the three phases describing how much of a promise a component is making. The three are planned, shipped and deprecated, and only a component page carries one. | [Release phases](../project/release-phases.mdx) |
| **style** | A visual variant applied as CSS only, never as behaviour. `base-lyra` is the default. Styles are addressable in `/view` and `/r` URLs; documentation pages have exactly one canonical URL regardless of style. | [Namespaces](../registry/namespaces.mdx) |
| **tier** | Which of the three levels a token sits at: primitive (a raw value), semantic (a role), or component (a part). Components read semantic and component tiers only. | [Token architecture](../foundations/token-architecture.mdx) |
| **twin** | The `.md` version of any documentation page, served by appending `.md` to its URL. Processed markdown, not raw MDX. | [Raw markdown API](../agents/raw-markdown-api.mdx) |