Glossary
One-line definitions of the words these docs use, each pointing at the page that explains it.
One line per word these docs use, in alphabetical order, each pointing at the page that explains it.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Admission | The checks the gateway runs before your provider is contacted: the key, the kill switch, throttling, then every armed cap. Cap |
| Armed | A cap whose hard stop is on. An armed cap refuses at its line; a cap that is not armed counts and alerts. Cap |
budget_exceeded |
The error.code of a refusal at a cap or a run's envelope: 402 in block mode, 429 in pause mode. Cap |
budget_unverifiable |
The error.code of the 503 an armed cap answers when it cannot confirm its spend, with Retry-After: 1. Fail-open and fail-closed |
| Chain head | The hash of the last receipt at or before the end of a period, in the ledger export's header. The hash-chained ledger |
| Content-free by schema | The metering record has no field that can hold a prompt, a completion or a tool argument. Content-free by schema |
| Customer spending cap | A dollar line per one of your customers, each in its own counter, read off the customer: piece of x-recovea-tags, on Team and above. Customer spending caps |
| Declared upstream | An OpenAI-compatible destination of your own, reached through https://api.recovea.ai/upstream/v1. Quickstart |
| Envelope | The budget one run carries, declared in x-recovea-run-budget. Breaker |
| Fail-open | A fault in a layer Recovea added passes your traffic through instead of refusing it. Fail-open and fail-closed |
| Fail-closed | An armed cap refuses rather than let spend run past its line or run unwatched; the kill switch refuses even when throttling faults or spend cannot be confirmed, as long as the gateway holds the organization's current keys and switches. Fail-open and fail-closed |
| Free ceiling | What Free protects up to: one monthly total of the organization's routed spend, never a limit on each cap. The figure is on the pricing page, and where a company domain's Free organizations share it, this organization's share is on its Limits page. Cap |
| Gateway key | Your rcv_live_… credential for the gateway, shown once when it is minted. Organization and keys |
| Genesis | The previous hash of the first receipt in a chain: sixty-four zeros. The hash-chained ledger |
| Hard stop | The switch that arms a cap, Enforce a hard stop on the cap form. It is not the kill switch. Where a cap is set |
| Invitation | How a person joins an organization they did not found: an Owner or an Admin invites, and they accept. Organization and keys |
| Key record id | The key_ id that names a gateway key in the platform and the API, never the secret. Organization and keys |
| Kill switch | A stop on one API key or on the whole organization, with no amount and no window, turned on and off on the Limits page, that refuses every request it covers while it is on and the gateway holds the organization's current keys and switches, on every plan. Cap |
kill_switch_on |
The error.code of the 402 the kill switch answers, with no Retry-After. Cap |
| Observe-only | A cap that counts and refuses nothing: on Free, every cap once the organization's month reaches the Free ceiling. Cap |
| Organization | Your account: it owns the keys, the caps, the receipts and the members. One verified mailbox founds one; others are joined by invitation. Organization and keys |
| Period key | The name of one window's count, such as 2026-09 for a month or 2026-W39 for a week. Caps and windows |
| Price-list version | The frozen reference price list that priced a receipt. A published version is never edited. Meter |
| Provider key | Your credential with OpenAI or Anthropic, held sealed by Recovea to sign your forwarded calls. Organization and keys |
| Receipt | The record of one priced request, chained to the receipt before it. Prove |
recovea-chain-v1 |
The published recipe that hashes each receipt with the one before it. The hash-chained ledger |
| Request id | The req_ id in x-recovea-request-id, which is also the receipt's request_id. Quickstart |
| Role | One of Owner, Admin, Member, Billing and Viewer, held by each member of an organization. Roles |
| Run | Whatever your system treats as one piece of work, named by x-recovea-run-id. Breaker |
| Scope | What a cap bounds: the organization, one key, or one of your customers. Cap |
| Tag | A label in x-recovea-tags, stored so you can cut your spend by it. Tags |
| Threshold | A percentage of a cap at which an alert fires, once per window. Alert thresholds |
| Window | The clock a cap runs on: day, week, month, year or lifetime, on UTC boundaries. Caps and windows |