The grid
CloudGrid has a small, consistent vocabulary. Learn these terms once and the rest of the docs read easily.
The core terms
Section titled “The core terms”| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Grid | The platform, and your org’s home on it. Your team’s shared runtime. |
| Entity | The universal unit. Every inspiration, app, and agent is an entity. |
| Node | A single entity on the grid. |
| Plug | Put a node on the grid — the deploy action. grid plug builds, deploys, and goes live. |
| Unplug | Take a node off the grid. grid unplug powers it down or archives it. |
| Outlet | The public URL where a node is reachable. |
| Wire | A binding between nodes or to an external resource (a GitHub repo, a webhook). |
| Space | A grouping within a grid that shapes what members discover. |
| Brain | The auto-classification job that generates a description, tags, and a diagram for an entity after it deploys. |
Inspirations and runtimes
Section titled “Inspirations and runtimes”Every entity belongs to one of two realms:
- Inspirations — static content (a single HTML page, a deck, a doc, a PDF). Instant to publish, served at a path URL, ephemeral by default.
- Runtimes — running services (apps and agents) defined by a
cloudgrid.yaml. Built and deployed, served at a subdomain, persistent.
See Inspirations vs runtimes for the full comparison.
One registry, three tiers
Section titled “One registry, three tiers”Inspirations, apps, and agents all live in one unified entity registry. Graduating between tiers is a metadata change, not a migration — the URL is preserved and the history is preserved.
| Tier | What it is | Who makes it |
|---|---|---|
| Inspiration | A static file dropped onto the grid | Anyone (drag-drop, CLI, MCP) |
| App | A multi-service deployment defined by cloudgrid.yaml |
Developers, technical PMs |
| Agent | An app with an agent: block (purpose, schedule) |
Anyone, from a template |
Apps and agents are the same entity type. An agent is an app with an agent:
block. There is no separate registry, deploy path, or console route.
The link file
Section titled “The link file”.cloudgrid/link.json is a gitignored file that binds a local directory to a
server-side entity. It is created automatically by grid plug (or grid dev)
once the entity exists. It holds the entity id, so commands run inside a linked
folder need no entity name.
Never commit .cloudgrid/ — grid new adds it to .gitignore for you. The
cloudgrid.yaml file, by contrast, is portable (no identity, no secrets) and is
safe to commit.