Concepts
Concepts
The durable concepts behind Viewport: automations, runners, context, approvals, actions, and receipts.
Viewport is built around one customer object: the automation.
Everything else exists to make that automation safe to run, easy to review, and possible to audit.
Core Concepts
| Concept | One line |
|---|---|
| Automations, routes, and policies | The customer-facing unit: trigger/route, repo/context/gate policy, worker, and run proof. |
| Inbox | Where humans approve plans, implementation gates, provider actions, and context updates. |
| Team Context | Context Sources and Update Targets agents may read or propose changes to. |
| Trust and privacy | What stays at the customer edge, what Viewport stores, and how credentials are separated. |
| Organizations and teams | Tenant boundary, team ownership, role/tag routing, and access scope. |
| Machines and pairing | How runners/daemons pair, advertise capability, and claim work. |
Legacy concepts still exist in the engine and references:
- Sessions are live agent runtime streams owned by the daemon.
- Plans are reviewable artifacts produced by workflow nodes.
- Workflow YAML is the portable/advanced compiled representation.
The product surface should start from Automations, not raw routes, recipes, or YAML. Routes and Policies are tabs inside Automations.
How They Fit Together
Automation
route
trigger
owner team
policy
repos
context sources + update targets
approvals
actions
runner
|
v
Run preparation
prepared repos
prepared context refs
prepared update targets
credential bindings
|
v
Runner execution
node context
artifacts
approvals
provider actions
|
v
Receipts + audit packetAutomation policy says what is allowed. Run preparation makes only those allowed things available. Node policy decides what each step can see or do. Receipts prove what actually happened.
Read Next
- Automations, routes, and policies for the main customer object.
- Inbox for human-in-the-loop approvals.
- Team Context for governed context sources and update targets.
- Trust and privacy for the edge-first security story.