Concepts
A handful of nouns show up everywhere in the product and the API. Learn them once and the rest of the docs read straight through.
Account
Section titled “Account”Your identity is a cryptographic master seed, exportable as a 24-word recovery phrase. There are no passwords; everything a device does is authorized by keys derived from this seed.
Device
Section titled “Device”A signed-in client — the web app, the desktop app, a phone, or a CLI install. Each device holds its own revocable token and shares end-to-end-encrypted state with your other devices.
Machine
Section titled “Machine”A computer that runs agents: any box where you’ve run
consortium auth login. Its daemon keeps a connection to the server,
heartbeats presence, and spawns sessions — including ones you start
remotely from the app. A machine is also a device, but the reverse isn’t
true (your phone isn’t a machine).
Session
Section titled “Session”One conversation with one agent, rooted in a directory on one machine. Sessions persist their encrypted history, can be controlled locally or remotely, and switch between the two with a keypress. See Sessions.
The runtime a session wraps — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Grok, Pi, or Consortium Code. See Agents.
Organization
Section titled “Organization”The unit of collaboration and billing. Every account has a personal org; team plans add shared ones with role-based membership. In the CLI, “active workspace” means your active organization.
Workspace
Section titled “Workspace”A shared surface inside an organization — an arranged layout of sessions and content with per-member permissions. See Workspaces & organizations.
Encrypted file storage attached to an account or organization. Session attachments live here; file names and contents are encrypted per node.
Artifact
Section titled “Artifact”A discrete output attached to a session (a report, a diff, a file), stored encrypted and addressable by ID — including through the External API.
Automation
Section titled “Automation”A scheduled agent run: a prompt, an agent, and a cron expression. Each firing creates a normal session. See Automations.
Provider account
Section titled “Provider account”A credential for a model vendor — an OAuth-connected subscription or an API key — used by BYOK. You can hold several per vendor and choose one per session.
Personal Access Token (PAT)
Section titled “Personal Access Token (PAT)”A csm_pat_… credential for the External API,
scoped and least-privilege. Not to be confused with device tokens (which
sign in devices) or provider accounts (which pay for models).