---
title: "Glossary | Chainfore"
url: https://chainfore.com/glossary
updated: 2026-10-22
summary: "The terms Chainfore uses for reliable autonomous systems, each with one definition, an example and related terms."
---

Glossary

# Glossary

The terms Chainfore uses for reliable autonomous systems, each with one definition, an example and related terms.

## Terms

- 01 Agent reliability engineering: The practice of bounding, verifying, recovering and measuring AI agents that act inside enterprise systems, so that autonomy is expanded on evidence.

- 02 Transcript versus outcome: The distinction between what an agent reports it did and the state of the system it touched. Reliability is graded on the outcome.

- 03 pass^k: The probability that an agent succeeds on all k independent attempts at a task, as opposed to pass@k, the probability that at least one attempt succeeds. Enterprises need pass^k.

- 04 Staged autonomy: Granting an agent authority in four stages: offline, shadow, supervised, limited; each expansion requires owner approval and new evidence.

- 05 Bounded workflow: A business process in which the data an agent may read, the tools it may call and the actions needing approval are defined in code before the agent runs.

- 06 Read-back verification: After an agent writes to a system of record, reading the record back to confirm the intended change exists exactly once.

- 07 Buyer scorecard: A weighted comparison of AI agent suppliers on a hidden test set: outcome, control and recovery, integration, economics, accountability.

- 08 Evaluation standard: Chainfore's seven published measures for an agent in production and the rule that every figure carries method, baseline, repeat count and limits.