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Glossary

Every team at Packt — editorial, rights, product, partnerships, engineering — ends up talking about the same handful of things: Works, Resources, Contracts, Products, Channels. This page is the shared dictionary. Each term gets one or two sentences in plain English, grouped by the area it belongs to.

Other pages link here the first time they use a term, so if a word looks like jargon, follow the link and you will land near its definition. When two documents seem to disagree about what a word means, this page is the tie-breaker.

A few words carry more than one meaning depending on context; those are called out in Words that mean more than one thing at the end.

Content — the Content Lake

Content Lake
The single, shared store for all of Packt's content. It ingests content once and lets it be reused in any format, with rights, provenance, and enrichment attached. See Content Lake.
Resource
The unit of content in the Content Lake — one DOCUMENT, IMAGE, VIDEO, AUDIO, or GIT_REPOSITORY. A book chapter, a diagram, a narration file, or a code repository is each a Resource. IDs look like res_ml_go_ch3.
Source
The external artifact a Resource was ingested from — the original Word file, Google Doc, or upload. One file that splits into many Resources still shares a single Source (src_…).
Work
The intellectual-property anchor: a title and the rights that govern it. Resources belong to a Work, and rights are held once on the Work rather than copied onto every Resource (wk_…). See Works & rights.
ContentUnit
An addressable part of content — a chapter, section, lesson, or timed segment — given its own stable identity so it can be reused, cited, attributed, or paid out on independently (cu_…).
Version (snapshot)
A saved point-in-time state of a Resource. Versioning is explicit: the live working state is addressed as latest, and taking a snapshot creates a durable ver_… version. Old snapshots that nothing depends on may eventually be compacted; a snapshot is kept while it is the latest, pinned by a Product, or referenced by an Activity. Blob versions share the same ver_… identifiers — one version grammar platform-wide — with one difference: a blob has no moving latest, so a blob is always addressed at an explicit version. See Resources & versions.
Blob
The raw binary behind non-document content (the image bytes, the audio file, the repository archive), stored once and served through short-lived direct links (blb_…).
PCF (Packt Content Format)
The structured JSON format the Content Lake stores content in — content as ordered blocks so one source can render as Markdown, HTML, ePub, print, or audiobook narration. See The content format.
Block
The smallest structural piece of a PCF document — a heading, paragraph, image, code listing, or table. Each block has a stable name (_key) and a content fingerprint (blockHash).
Activity
An immutable record of how a piece of content came to be — created, translated, narrated, compiled, enriched. Activities carry the agent responsible and any tooling used, and together they form the provenance graph. See Provenance.
Provenance
The recorded, queryable history of content: what it was derived from, what AI touched it, and who is owed attribution or royalties.
Knowledge Graph
A global registry of the real-world things content refers to — technologies, people, tools, languages. Content links to the graph so it gains context (currency, credibility, relationships) without re-storing that context. See Enrichment & the Knowledge Graph.
Knowledge-graph entity
One thing in that registry — for example "React" or "Go" — with live metadata. IDs look like kg_….
Entity overlay
The separate layer that pins knowledge-graph entities to exact spots in content (a block plus a character range), so the graph can change without re-versioning the content.
Tag
A free-text label a person or app applies to a Resource for organisation and filtering (up to fifty per Resource). See Access, labels & visibility.
Label
A system-generated marker the platform derives from signals (for example trending). Labels are not user-set.
Access grant
An entry on a Resource's access-control list that says which people or apps may see or change it — the layer above tenancy and rights.
Staging
The holding area for content that has been uploaded but not yet brought into a Work. Staged content is owner-only, marked usable: false, and cannot appear in a Product until it is promoted into a Work under a Contract.

Rights — Contracts

Contract
The governing rights instrument — the agreement that says what may be done with a Work, where, by whom, and until when. Contracts attach to Works (ctr_…). See Contracts & Rights.
Direction (inbound / outbound)
INBOUND contracts record rights Packt acquires (author and rights-holder agreements, open licences); OUTBOUND contracts record rights Packt grants onward (distributor and reseller deals). Only inbound contracts feed a Work's resolved rights.
Agent
A party to a contract — an author, publisher, distributor, reseller, rights holder, or licensee (agt_…). (Distinct from an activity agent; see the disambiguation note at the end.)
Rights (resolved)
The merged, effective set of terms for a Work after combining all its inbound contracts. This is what travels with every read and search result.
rights_basis
The specific contract versions the platform checked when it last resolved a Resource's rights — "the platform remembers which contract version it relied on", so consequential actions can revalidate against exactly that version. On an Activity, the rights basis is the authority for that act: a pinned contract or, where no grant applies, an asserted statutory exception.
Territorial rights
Where a Work may be used — worldwide, specific country codes, or platform-maintained territory sets (for example EU, NORTH_AMERICA), each PERMITTED or PROHIBITED.
Manifestation rights
Which sellable embodiments may be produced — a manifestation class (PRINT, EBOOK, AUDIOBOOK, VIDEO, ONLINE, SCORM_PACKAGE) and optionally a form (PAPERBACK vs HARDBACK). Grants never name individual products.
Usage type
One of the sixteen things a consumer might do with content — ACCESS, DISPLAY, COPY, PRINT, LEND, DERIVE, TRANSLATE, DISTRIBUTE, MAKE_AVAILABLE, MANUFACTURE, AI_GROUNDING, AI_RETRIEVAL, AI_SUMMARISATION, AI_WRITING_ASSISTANCE, AI_DISTRIBUTION, AI_TRAINING — each PERMITTED, PROHIBITED, or CONDITIONAL. See The contract model and AI & your content.
Handling term
An obligation that travels with use — most importantly ATTRIBUTION (REQUIRED), and automated product inclusion.
Royalty
The commercial terms of a contract: type (FREE, FIXED_FEE, or ROYALTY), the basis it is calculated on, and the rate rules. Commercial terms are private and shown only to callers allowed to see them. See Royalties & commercial terms.
Basis
What a royalty percentage is applied to — NET_RECEIPTS (what Packt actually receives) or LIST_PRICE (the headline price).
Duration
A contract's validity window — perpetual or dated, with optional auto-renewal, notice periods, and continuing-access terms.
Default contract
A pre-built contract for a well-known open-source or Creative Commons licence (for example ctr_default_cc_by_4_0), so openly licensed material can be ingested without bespoke paperwork. See Standard licences.
Statutory exception
A use the law permits with no grant at all — fair dealing for criticism or review, quotation, parody, incidental inclusion. A per-use defence, not a standing right, so it is recorded as an accountable assertion on the Activity making the use, never as a contract. See Provenance & attribution.

Products

Expression
A realisation of a Work in a particular medium and language — the English text edition, its audiobook narration, a French translation (expr_…).
Manifestation
A sellable embodiment of an Expression — the SKU. A class, optionally a form, plus configuration, carrying its own ISBN (man_…).
Product
The sellable thing one or more Manifestations are offered as, classified by a product type (prod_…). See Products.
Product type
What kind of thing is being sold — Book, Video Course, Audiobook, Interactive, Course, Certification, Article, or Newsletter. Different axis from manifestation class.
Format
A specific file rendition of a Manifestation (an ePub, a PDF, a SCORM package). Each format declares how it is made.
Format sourcing (rendered / artifact)
How a format's file comes to exist. RENDERED formats are assembled on the fly from Content Lake Resources; ARTIFACT formats are pre-existing uploaded files. A product can carry both.
Composition
The ordered tree that declares what a product is made of — parts, chapters, modules, lessons — and the source every rendered format is generated from. See Composition & format generation.
Version pinning
Whether a composition node tracks the latest Content Lake version of its content or is pinned to a specific one. Rule of thumb: track during development, pin at publication.
Catalogue
A curated or rule-driven collection of products, and the layer where channel-specific titles, blurbs, and prices are applied (cat_…). See Catalogues.
ISBN
The external identifier of a sellable embodiment — one per Manifestation, not per file. A book may have separate ePub, PDF, and print ISBNs.
Series, Bundle, Collection
Product groupings — an ordered sequence (ser_…), a priced package of several products (bun_…), and a curated grouping (col_…).

Distribution & Channels

Channel
A partner that takes products to customers (for example Amazon US), stored as a profile of how it uses content — formats, territory, and access model (chan_…). See Channels.
Usage profile
The part of a channel that declares which usage types it needs, so every item can be matched against it before it ships.
Distribution
The service that ships catalogue content to channels — after a rights matchmaker approves each item for each channel. The channel boundary is the final rights gate. See Distribution & Channels.

Platform

Identifiers (the Service ID Registry)
Every entity has a typed, human-readable ID — a short prefix, an underscore, then a unique value (res_…, wk_…, ctr_…, prod_…). The prefix says what kind of thing an ID refers to at a glance. The platform keeps one registry of these prefixes so no two services mint IDs under the same one. Default contracts are the one exception to the random-suffix rule: they use well-known IDs like ctr_default_cc_by_4_0 so the same default can be referenced across tenants. See the ID cheatsheet on Core concepts.
Tenant
The hard isolation boundary — one per business (Packt, Expert Edge, CVP). Every entity belongs to exactly one tenant, and cross-tenant access is architecturally impossible. See Tenancy, trust & security.
WorkOS
The identity provider that issues the platform's login and access tokens for people, third-party apps, and services — through two pools: Packt Login (customers and authors) and Packt Platform (staff and partner businesses). See Sign-in & identity pools.
Packt Login
The one customer account across Packt's customer-facing surfaces — packtpub.com, the subscription site, the vertical microsites, and author tooling. See Sign-in & identity pools.
Conditional access
The check on top of permissions for people in platform tooling — whether a permitted person may act right now, given their device, network, and how recently they proved it's really them. Distinct from zero trust. See Sign-in & identity pools.
Token (JWT)
The signed credential every request carries. It names the caller (the principal), the tenant, and the scopes granted. There are no API keys. See Authentication.
Scope
A permission on a token — for example contracts.commercial.read. Scopes are the first of the three authorisation layers (scope → access grant → contract rights).
Principal
Who a token acts as — a user, a third-party application acting for a user, or a service acting for itself. The principal maps to an agent so actions can be attributed.
Event
A record that something happened (a Resource was created, a contract changed), published so other services and partners can react without polling. See Events & webhooks.
EventBridge
The internal event backbone. Internally, events use an EventBridge-native envelope.
CloudEvents
The open, standard event envelope the platform uses only at its external edge — the Eventing service publishes its external catalogue (packt.* events, distinct from platform events) as CloudEvents when delivering to webhooks, Zapier, or n8n.
Public API
The platform's front door for apps and partners — a REST API (version 1) covering the Content Lake, rights, and search, with a machine-readable OpenAPI specification. See The Public API.
Zero trust
The security stance that every request is authenticated and authorised on its own merits — there is no trusted internal network. Distinct from conditional access, which judges the context of an already-authenticated person. See Principles.
Fail-closed
The design rule that a missing or forgotten permission check denies access rather than granting it.

Words that mean more than one thing

Use the qualified term

A few words carry different meanings depending on context. Prefer the qualified form to avoid ambiguity.

  • Agent. A contract agent is a party to a contract (an author, publisher, distributor). An activity agent is the actor that performed an Activity (HUMAN, SYSTEM, or ORGANISATION). An LLM is never an activity agent — it is recorded as tooling on the Activity.
  • Entity. Depending on context this means a stored entity (a Resource, Work, Source, ContentUnit, or Activity), a knowledge-graph entity (a real-world thing content refers to), or the loose everyday sense. Say which you mean.
  • Version. For a Resource, a snapshot (ver_…) versus the live working state (latest). For a Blob, the same ver_… grammar with no latest. For an API, the interface version (v0). For a contract, the amendment number.