Glossary
Loam, defined.
Definitions for Loam’s product features and internal terms. Each entry states what the term means without requiring the rest of the site.
- Loam
- Loam is an AI software-delivery system for VS Code and phone. Four role-specific AI collaborators plan, build, review, and verify work while an account-scoped engineering record carries decisions and open work forward. A local user-space MCP process connects supported editor tools to Loam’s hosted service. Loam is built on Anthropic’s Claude and is independent from Anthropic.
- Behavioral Compression
- Behavioral compression is Loam’s term for using a stable role description to replace many overlapping behavioral instructions. It is an internal design pattern, not a published benchmark. See the full argument in the Loam thesis.
- Character-Driven Context
- Character-driven context defines a stable AI role, responsibility, and review posture so the model has a consistent decision frame across a work session. The role is a working context, not a claim that the collaborator is human.
- The 47-Rule Ceiling
- The 47-rule ceiling is a historical name for an internal observation that long, overlapping instruction lists become harder to satisfy consistently. Forty-seven is not a universal threshold or a published result.
- Team Canon
- Team Canon is the account-scoped project record for architecture decisions, accepted constraints, failures, and open work. Relevant entries are retrieved for later sessions, reducing re-explanation.
- Temperature Entry
- A temperature entry is a role-specific post-session note capturing decisions, risks, and observations for later synthesis. It may contribute to a cross-team signal.
- Cross-Team Signal
- A cross-team signal is a pattern surfaced automatically when multiple Loam team members independently converge on the same observation across their temperature entries, without coordinating. Nobody writes a cross-team signal — it is detected by the memory system reading four independent arcs and finding the overlap.
- Character-Driven Temporal Evolution
- Character-driven temporal evolution is Loam’s term for updating a role’s later context with entries from its earlier role-specific record.
- The Memory Pipeline
- The memory pipeline stores selected session decisions, corrections, and open work in an account-scoped record. Later sessions retrieve relevant entries; users can inspect or delete the record. The architecture is documented on the proof page.
- Morning Read
- The Morning Read is a daily audio briefing generated from recent activity and the account-scoped project record. See it on the audio page.
- Meet the Team
- Meet the Team is a synthesized-voice phone session with all four AI collaborators and relevant project context from the account-scoped record. The team can also place the call to a guest you introduce.
- Reception
- Reception is the inbound AI phone intake. Meg Ostrander’s shipped pickup is “Loam, front desk — this is Meg.” She verifies callers before disclosing account information, records the request, and routes supported work. She does not perform engineering tasks.
- Call Team
- Call Team places a focused call to a single team member you pick from the sidebar — Carl for architecture, Diana for design, Anthony for code, Abish for QA — when you want depth from one voice rather than the whole room.
- Tip the Team
- Tip the Team lets a user send optional context or a short note to one collaborator outside a build session. No payment is involved.
- Conference Call
- The Conference Call opens a synthesized-voice phone session with all four Loam AI collaborators and a prioritized working set from the relevant account-scoped project record. The orchestrator can transfer the session to a requested collaborator. The call does not load the entire archive.
- ReachOut
- ReachOut is the outbound counterpart to Conference Call. The team places the call when something is worth saying — a blocked milestone, a finished build, a pattern that needs a decision the user has to make. The opener carries the reason ("I'm calling about the auth middleware fix"), not a scripted greeting. Off by default; opt-in via the phone settings panel in the Loam sidebar, with per-trigger granularity.
- The Greenhouse
- The Greenhouse is a Loam-produced podcast that uses synthesized voices. Published episodes are available on Spotify.
- Build Mode
- Build Mode executes approved milestones, records commits and QA results, and pauses at blockers or configured gates. When a GitHub repository is linked, each completed milestone pushes to that repository’s main branch without another prompt. What starting Build Mode authorizes.
That's the vocabulary. The ideas behind it live in the thesis — and the team that runs on them is on the team page.
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