Glossary

The words Tesria uses, in plain English, from A to Z. Where a word has a page of its own, the entry links to it.

A

• Accept all, Reject all: the buttons above the editor when a page has changed under you, from another person, a script or an assistant. They keep or discard those highlighted changes. See Changes from assistants and the API.

• Administrator: someone in the administrator tier, who runs the wiki day to day: accounts, settings, backups and security. What each administrator may do is set by their role.

• API token: a long secret, made on your profile, that lets a script or an AI assistant act as you. It can be made read-only. See API tokens.

• Archive: to put a space away without deleting it: it leaves the list of spaces and public reading, and nothing in it is touched. It can be brought back at any time.

• Attachment: a file stored with a page, such as a picture, a PDF or a video, up to 25 MB. See Attachments.

• Audit log: the record of every administrative change: who did what, and when. It is chained, so that editing or deleting an entry is detected.

B

• Backup: a copy of the wiki that it can be brought back from. Tesria makes them by itself, from the first start. See Backups and recovery.

C

• Certificate: what lets a browser confirm it is talking to your server. On your own network, each device has to be told once to trust Tesria’s. See Trusting the local certificate.

• Comment: a note on a page, or on a few words of it, for discussion that should not be in the page itself. A thread can be resolved when it is settled. See Comments.

D

• Draft: a page, or changes to a page, not yet published. A new page is a draft only its writer can see until Publish. See Drafts, Publish and Update.

E

• Element: anything you can put on a page besides plain text: a table, a panel, a picture, a chart, a diagram. See Elements.

• Excerpt: a part of a page marked so that other pages can include it, and show it up to date wherever it appears.

• Export: a download of a page (Markdown, HTML or PDF) or of a whole space (a website or a wiki pack). See Exporting and publishing.

G

• Group: a named set of people, so that a space or page can be shared with all of them at once. Three are built in and keep themselves up to date: Users (everyone with an account), Admins and Owner. See Groups.

H

• History: every version a page has had, with who made it and when. Any version can be looked at or brought back. See History and restoring.

• Home page: the page a space opens on: its front door, usually saying what the space is for.

I

• Instance: one installation of Tesria, with its own accounts, spaces and settings. “This instance” means your Tesria.

• Instance-wide template: a template offered in every space, rather than one. See Templates.

K

• Key: a space’s short code, such as ENG or TEAM, used in the address of every page in it. It cannot be changed after the space is made.

• Kill switches: three switches in Admin, Security (Admin is in the top bar; in a narrower window it is under More, and on a phone in the ☰ menu) that take effect at once for the whole wiki: public spaces, public registration, and two-factor for administrators.

L

• Label: a one-word tag on a page, such as onboarding, for finding related pages across spaces. See Labels.

• Live content: a block that works out what to show each time the page is read, such as the pages under this one, or the pages with a label. Tesria has twelve kinds. See Live content.

M

• MCP: the Model Context Protocol: a common way for AI assistants to use other software. Tesria has an MCP server built in. See MCP.

• Mention: a person’s name typed after @ in a page or comment. They are told about it. See Mentions and notifications.

N

• Notification: a message in the bell at the top of the page, and by email if you ask for it, when something you watch changes or someone mentions you.

O

• Offsite copy: a copy of the backups kept somewhere other than the server: a cloud bucket, a network drive or a removable drive, so that losing the machine does not lose the wiki. See Offsite copies.

• Open space: a space that has not been limited to particular people, which everyone signed in can read, edit and manage. Every new space starts open.

• Owner: the one account that owns the wiki. It can do everything, and nobody else can suspend it, reset it or take its place. Ownership can be handed over.

P

• Page: one document in a space. Pages sit in a tree: any page can have pages under it.

• Page properties: a small table of facts at the top of a page, such as its owner and status, which a report on another page can gather from many pages at once.

• Page tree: the outline of a space’s pages in its sidebar, showing which page sits under which. See The page tree and reordering.

• Panel: a colored box that makes a paragraph stand out: Info, Note, Tip, Warning or Error. See Panels.

• Point-in-time recovery: bringing the wiki back to any moment you choose, to the second, not only to when a backup was taken.

• Public address: the address people use to open your Tesria, set in Admin, Settings (Admin is in the top bar; in a narrower window it is under More, and on a phone in the ☰ menu). Links in emails use it.

• Public reading: letting people without an account read chosen spaces. It needs two switches: one for the wiki and one for the space. See Public reading.

• Publish: to make a draft a real page that others can see. Later changes are published with Update.

R

• Read-only token: an API token that can read and search but not change anything. The right choice for most scripts and assistants.

• Recovery code: one of a set of single-use codes you save when you turn on two-factor sign-in. One gets you in if you lose your phone, or resets your password. See Two-factor and recovery codes.

• Restore: to bring something back: a page from the trash, an older version of a page, or the whole wiki from a backup. See Restoring and undo.

• Restore drill: a test that restores a backup somewhere temporary and checks it, without touching the wiki. A backup that has never been restored has not been proved to work. See Restore drills.

• Restriction: a limit on who may view or edit one page, and the pages under it, narrower than its space. See Restrictions.

• Retention: how long backups are kept before the oldest are removed. See Retention.

• Right: permission to do one kind of thing across the wiki, such as Create spaces or Use API tokens. Roles hold rights.

• Role: a named set of rights, such as the built-in User and Administrator roles. Everyone has one. See Roles.

S

• Session: one device where you are signed in. Your profile lists them, and any one can be signed out. See Sessions.

• Slash menu: the list of elements that appears when you type / in the editor. See The slash menu.

• Space: a home for pages that belong together, such as a team’s or a project’s, with its own page tree and its own list of who can read and edit it. See What a space is.

• Space permissions: who may View, Edit or Admin a space: people, groups, or everyone signed in. See Who can see a space.

• Status: a small colored label inside a sentence or table, such as IN PROGRESS or DONE.

T

• Template: a page that new pages start from, with headings and hints already in place. See Templates.

• Tier: one of three levels, User, Administrator and Owner, that decides who may act on whom. A role is a set of rights within a tier. See Owner, administrators and users.

• Tracked changes: changes made to a page while you were editing it, by someone else, a script or an assistant, shown highlighted for you to accept or reject.

• Trash: where deleted pages go. They can be restored from there, or deleted permanently. See Trash.

• Two-factor sign-in: signing in with a six-digit code from an app on your phone as well as your password, so that a stolen password alone is not enough.

U

• Update: the button that publishes your changes to a page that already exists. Each update makes a new version.

V

• Version: one saved state of a page. Every publish and update adds one to its history.

W

• Watch: asking to be told when a page or a whole space changes. See Watching.

• Webhook: Tesria calling another program the moment something happens in a space. See Webhooks.

• Wiki pack: one file holding a whole space, with its history, comments and attachments, for keeping or for moving to another Tesria. See Wiki packs.