Concepts

A folder on the user's machine holding a Git repository, usually linked to a GitHub repository. The unit everything else belongs to.

One conversation with a single Provider inside a Project, with its own Model, Effort and context (Model and Effort can change between Turns); it maps one-to-one to the Provider's own session. /clear and ⌘N start a new Thread in the same Project; the old one stays in the sidebar until the user deletes it. A finished Thread is deleted, not archived: deleting removes its Transcript, Approvals, Attachments and Checkpoints for good, and its worktree with them (its branch stays). The Provider's own session files are left to the Provider. A new chat Thread works in a worktree of its own by default. See ADR-0005 and ADR-0011.

One user prompt in a Thread and everything the Provider does in response, until it completes, is interrupted, or fails.

An agent CLI installed and logged in on the user's machine that Oxide drives: Claude Code, Codex, or Antigravity CLI (agy).

One of the five tools in the right dock: Diff, Files, Terminal, Pull request or Issues. Files is a navigator, not an editor: it browses the selected checkout and opens files in the Code workspace, which lives in the centre beside the Thread. A Surface can be maximized and restored while keeping its content and working state. The Pull request and Issues lists belong to the Project's repository; only branch actions (opening a pull request, checking one out) act on the selected Thread's checkout and name it. Reviewing a remote pull request records its identity for the Diff Surface and never changes a checkout.

A snapshot of a Thread's files taken when a Turn starts and when it ends, so the Diff Surface can show what that Turn changed and the Thread's files can be restored to how they were before a Turn. Restoring takes a Checkpoint first, so it can be undone, and does not rewind the Provider's session. See ADR-0011.

The account of a change's intent, evidence and risk signals that Oxide computes, without an LLM, from the Transcript, Checkpoints, Settings and GitHub. It is a section of the Diff Surface, shows separate signals instead of a single score, and keeps the agent's closing message apart as a claim. In Branch scope it covers the whole branch: every Turn, the commits no Turn produced, the pull request's checks, Approvals and Permission modes. Also called the Dossier. Published, it is a section of a pull request's body between HTML comment markers: computed facts only, commands redacted, and prompts or the agent's message only when the author opts in for that pull request. The section records the commit and the options it was published with; a push from Oxide rewrites only the marked range, and a section the author removed is never re-added. When the branch moves outside Oxide the section is out of date until the author refreshes it.

A review of a change by a Provider session that received only the diff and the issue, never the original Thread. Its findings become Line comments the user keeps or dismisses.

Putting the selected Thread's files back to how they were before a chosen Turn, file by file: HEAD, the branches, the user's index and the ignored files stay as they were, and the Provider's session is not rewound. It asks first, naming the files it changes, and takes a Checkpoint first, so it can be undone. It is refused while a Turn runs in that checkout, and the agent is told on its next prompt which files went back. See ADR-0011.