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Glossary

This glossary provides a shared vocabulary across the Base Product Specification (BPS),
AI Product Deployment Specification (AIPDS), and AI Product Specification (AIPROD).

It combines foundational terms (BPS) with AI-specific definitions (AIPDS, AIPROD),
ensuring clarity, consistency, and governance across specifications.

Core Concepts​

Product​

An entity that satisfies the true product characteristics — including deployability, self-description, discoverability, governance, and economic sustainability.

Base Product (BPS)​

A meta-framework defining the core characteristics of any product, independent of its domain (data, AI, software, etc.).

Data Product​

A productized form of data that satisfies BPS characteristics (deployable, discoverable, trustworthy, etc.) and is governed for consumption.

AI Product​

A packaged, consumable unit of AI capability (prediction, generation, reasoning, interaction)
with self-service access and governance.

See: AIPDS · AIPROD

AI Asset​

A raw or incomplete AI element (e.g., dataset, model weights, API) that lacks sufficient product characteristics to qualify as an AI Product.

Governance & Risk​

Governance Metadata​

Machine-readable declarations of policies, obligations, and compliance markers that apply to a product.

Risk Classification​

The categorization of a product by regulatory or organizational risk levels (Minimal, Limited, High, Unacceptable).

Prohibited Uses​

Explicit contexts or applications where a product must not be used, declared in AIPROD.

Audit Evidence​

Artifacts (logs, fairness reports, compliance certificates) used to demonstrate alignment with governance obligations.

Trust & Transparency​

Explainability​

Mechanisms that make outputs of an AI Product understandable to humans (e.g., feature importance, counterfactuals).

Transparency​

Declarations about training data, model architecture, governance policies, and limitations of a product.

Observability Signals​

Telemetry, rationales, and fairness indicators that provide visibility into product behavior at runtime and over time.

Lineage​

The record of dependencies, upstream/downstream products, and version history.

Provenance​

The origin of a product, including data sources, models, and contributors involved in its creation.

Trustworthy Discovery Mechanism​

A Trustworthy Discovery Mechanism is a catalog, registry, or marketplace that enables consumers (human, system, or agent) to find and evaluate AI Products with confidence in the accuracy, integrity, and governance of the information provided.

Key attributes:

  • Authoritative → entries are curated or validated by accountable owners.
  • Reliable → available, queryable, and technically dependable.
  • Governed → compliant with organizational, regulatory, or ecosystem-level policies.
  • Transparent → includes sufficient metadata for evaluation (purpose, risk, metrics).
  • Interoperable → supports open standards for cross-platform discovery.

Principle: If an AI Product cannot be discovered via a trustworthy discovery mechanism, it cannot be fully trusted, governed, or reused.

Economic & Operational​

Economic Model​

The declared framework for pricing, cost, and resource consumption of a product (fixed, usage-based, hybrid, tokenized, etc.).

Discoverability​

The ability of a product to be registered, cataloged, and found through trustworthy discovery mechanisms.

Interoperability​

The ability of a product to integrate into broader ecosystems by adhering to open standards for interfaces, metadata, and data formats.

Composability​

The ability of a product to combine with others (data or AI) into pipelines, workflows, or higher-order systems.

Extension Schema​

The mechanism by which a product supports schema evolution, plug-ins, and domain-specific adaptations.

Lifecycle​

Lifecycle Stage​

Declared maturity of a product (Experimental, Beta, Production, Deprecated, Retired).

Versioning​

The controlled evolution of a product, typically using semantic versioning (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH).

Retirement​

The withdrawal of a product from active use, while preserving metadata for audit and lineage.

Discovery & Cataloging​

Catalog Entry​

The registration of a product in a searchable catalog or marketplace, including metadata, lineage, and governance markers.

Principle: Shared vocabulary is a form of governance — without it, even well-designed products risk misunderstanding and misuse.