Terminology

Sourcedocs/terminology.md

The vocabulary is not decoration. A process manager gives you a lot of nouns to keep straight, and sheep are a better mnemonic than "target group" or "managed unit".

Where the joke would cost clarity it gets dropped: kill is called kill, error messages are written in plain technical English, and every themed verb has a straight alias that works forever.

The lexicon

the shepherd the daemon log messages, docs yes

the flock every managed process, as a set shep flock (aliases list, ls) yes

a sheep one managed process (singular only) shep describe <name> yes

a fold a namespace or group shep fold backend, fold = in config yes

Flockfile the app config file Flockfile.toml / .yaml / .json / .json5 yes

bleats logs shep bleats (alias logs) yes

muster bring a saved flock back shep save, then shep muster yes

the shepherd channel a private pipe on fd 3 between daemon and app channel = true, shep trigger yes

a lamb a child process of a sheep tree-kill, describe's tree view yes

a dog a plugin process the shepherd supervises shep enable metrics, shep dogs yes

a bark a webhook alert [dog.bark.sinks] config, shep barks yes

a smit a short mark a dog paints on a sheep the SMIT column in shep flock and the lookout yes

the whistle the MCP interface agents talk to shep whistle yes

the lookout the terminal dashboard shep lookout (alias dash) partly

adopt / rehome register or drop a third-party dog shep adopt <path> [--name <name>] yes

that'll do graceful stop, after the real herding command shep thatlldo yes

stock change how many instances of an app run (the stocking rate) shep stock <name> <count> (alias scale) yes

signal send a signal to one sheep's own process shep signal <selector> <signal> yes

whisper write a line to a sheep's stdin shep whisper <selector> <line> (alias sendline) yes

set / get / unset the flat key-value junk drawer shep set, shep get, shep unset yes

Sheepdogs and sheep were separate ideas from the start

So "dog" never means the daemon. The shepherd is the shepherd. Dogs are plugins that work for it: metrics andbark ship inside the binary, andshep adopt runs anyone else's.

Usage rules

Readability beats theme, every time.

Straight verbs always work

start, stop, restart, list, logs and delete are first-class aliases forever. Sheep terms are the personality layer, not a wall.

Destructive operations keep plain names

kill, delete, exit codes and error messages carry zero whimsy: misreading one costs a process.

Types may be themed when self-evident

Flock, Fold and Bark are fine. Heft as a struct name is not; it is called host.

Playful in prose, exact in reference

The README can say shep keeps your flock alive. The config reference says process.

Log and error output stays technical

The dog barks in webhooks, not in stderr.

Where to go next

Your first Flockfile →

Put the vocabulary to work: every field, in the config that actually uses these words.

Folds →

One of the words above, worked through on its own: what a fold is, and what it deliberately isn't.