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Glossary ​

Two sections, each alphabetized. Building blocks covers the project artifacts, files, and tools you assemble — what your directory contains and which CLI runs over what. Hoon covers the language constructs you write into your kernel — the arms, types, and utilities that make up the kernel source. Hoon entries also appear (with worked examples) on Build / Kernel; the duplication is intentional.

Building Blocks ​

Block ​

A snippet of Hoon a graft contributes at a single marker. [graft.blocks.<marker>] in the manifest declares the block's contents; nockup graft inject splices it into app.hoon at the matching :: nockup:<marker> anchor. See Grafts / Manifest Schema.

Driver ​

Synonym for hull in vesl docs — see Hull. Note that nockchain itself uses driver for I/O subcomponents inside NockApp (nockapp::driver::*, nockapp/src/drivers/{file,http,timer,...}.rs); those run inside the hull and aren't surfaced through the SDK.

Family ​

One of the priority bands in vesl's graft taxonomy. The priority number orders graft injection and labels the family. See Build / Grafts / The 5-Family Graft Taxonomy for the bands, their priority ranges, and members.

Graft ​

A composable unit shipped as <name>-graft.hoon (the Hoon library) plus a sibling <name>-graft.toml (the manifest). nockup graft inject discovers manifests under hoon/lib/ and splices their declared blocks into your kernel. See Build / Grafts.

nockup graft ​

The CLI that composes grafts into a kernel. Discovers manifests, splices per-marker blocks into app.hoon, runs lint families, and emits per-graft sha256 banners. Preview by default; --apply writes to disk. The underlying binary is nockup-graft (sidecar to nockup's plugin discovery); error output and on-disk banner comments still identify it as graft-inject since that's the source-of-truth name. See Reference / CLI.

Hoon ​

Nockchain's source language. Compiles to Nock; kernel source files are Hoon. See Build / Kernel.

hoonc ​

The Hoon compiler. Reads hoon/app/app.hoon (plus the library tree) and produces out.jam — the kernel bytes the hull loads. Ships in the nockchain toolchain.

Hull ​

In vesl: the Rust process that hosts the kernel — the Rust harness in your src/main.rs that boots out.jam as a NockApp, sends pokes, and reads effects. Also the hull=@ keying scheme that commitment grafts use to address logical cells. See Build / NockApp Anatomy.

JAM ​

Nockchain's serialization format for nouns. jam produces a deterministic byte sequence from a noun; cue reads the bytes back into a noun. JAM is part of the nockchain runtime, not vesl.

Kernel ​

The compiled out.jam running inside NockApp. Logic-only (no I/O), pure functions over nouns, deterministic. The hull does the I/O and the kernel does the math.

Manifest ​

A graft's <name>-graft.toml file. Declares per-marker blocks of Hoon, gate selection, type names, and metadata (priority, version, stability). See Grafts / Manifest Schema.

Marker ​

One of the ten :: nockup:* anchor comments in templates/app.hoon. nockup graft inject splices graft blocks at the markers; the codegen markers (domain-effect, effect-union, load-defaults) are anchors for the composer's own passes. See Build / NockApp Anatomy — Anchor Markers for the per-marker definitions.

nockchain ​

The upstream runtime. Provides Nock, Hoon, the NockApp harness, JAM, and tip5. vesl runs a Hoon kernel inside a NockApp and ships a graft library on top.

nockup ​

Nockchain's developer CLI. nockup project init scaffolds a NockApp project; nockup package add installs grafts. vesl-nockup will eventually ship as a package within it.

NounSlab ​

The Rust noun container. The hull allocates nouns into a slab, builds a poke head and arguments inside it, and submits the slab to the kernel via app.poke(...). Defined in nockapp::noun::slab. See Build / Hull.

Panic ​

A runtime crash. In the hull, a Rust panic! aborts the spawned app.run() task — vesl-test watch surfaces this as kernel-died: <reason> rather than crashing itself. In the kernel, mule traps panics so a single bad cause doesn't terminate the kernel; deliberate ?> exits surface as Ok(vec![]) from app.poke(...) with a mule-trace on stderr. See Troubleshooting / Common Pitfalls.

Settle ​

In vesl: the canonical commitment-family graft (priority 10). Registers Merkle roots per hull=@, verifies payloads against a gate, settles notes with replay protection and epoch rotation. The heaviest commitment primitive; what most apps reach for first.

Snapshot ​

A serialized kernel-state checkpoint. Lets a kernel resume without replaying every poke since boot. See Build / State & Snapshots.

tip5 ​

Nockchain's hash function — a custom Merkle hash optimized for STARK-friendliness. ~100 constraints per call vs. ~30k for SHA-256. Used by vesl-merkle.hoon and zeke.hoon. tip5 is part of the nockchain runtime.

Trellis ​

A pattern: one kernel split across multiple hull=@ namespaces, each with its own root and lifecycle. Gives the isolation of separate kernels without booting separate NockApps. See Build / Grafts — The Trellis Pattern.

vesl ​

Verifiable Execution and Settlement Layer. A Rust SDK (vesl-core) plus a Hoon graft library that runs inside nockchain's NockApp. See vesl at a glance.

vesl-core ​

vesl's Rust SDK crate: Mint, Guard, builder helpers, and poke constructors for every shipped graft. See Reference / vesl-core.

vesl-nockup ​

The recommended development environment for building nockapps; the subject of this guide. Ships the templates, the nockup graft CLI, and the example apps.

vesl.toml ​

Runtime config file — settlement modes, key derivation, chain settings. See Reference / vesl.toml.

Hoon ​

Arm ​

A function on a Hoon core. The kernel's two top-level arms are ++poke (write) and ++peek (read); each cause-tag in nockup:poke is an arm of the ?- switch. See Build / Kernel.

Atoms and Auras ​

A Hoon atom is a non-negative integer. Auras (@t, @ud, @tas, @da, @) are tags on atoms that record how to read the integer — UTF-8 cord, decimal number, lowercase symbol, absolute date, or untyped — without changing the underlying value. See Build / Kernel.

Cause ​

The input shape to a kernel ++poke arm. A cause is a tagged tuple — [%settle-register hull root], [%my-action arg1 arg2] — pattern-matched by the ?- arm and dispatched to its handler. See Build / Inject.

Cell ​

A noun built from two other nouns — an ordered pair [a b]. Cells nest right-associatively, so [1 2 3] is [1 [2 3]]. With atoms, cells compose every noun a kernel handles.

Cue ​

The JAM deserializer — the inverse of jam. Reads a noun back out of a byte buffer the kernel previously wrote with jam. JAM and cue are nockchain primitives, not vesl ones.

Domain ​

The cause tags, peek paths, and verification gates you write between the markers. Distinct from grafts, which are pre-written and composed in for you. See Build / Kernel.

Effect ​

The output shape from a kernel ++poke arm — a (list effect) of tagged nouns the hull receives back from app.poke(...).await. The hull parses heads via vesl_core::effect_head_tags. See Build / Hull.

Gate ​

A Hoon function. Takes one or more sample arguments, returns a value computed from its body. Distinct from a verification gate — that is vesl's parameterized decision function consumed by commitment grafts, not the language-level construct.

Mule ​

The Hoon crash-isolation wrapper. Catches a downstream panic and returns it as a value rather than terminating the kernel. The wrapper.hoon library wraps every ++poke arm so a single bad cause doesn't take down the kernel.

Noun ​

The universal value type in Nock and Hoon. Either an atom (a non-negative integer) or a cell (an ordered pair of two nouns). Everything in a kernel — state, causes, effects — is a noun.

Peek ​

The read arm of a kernel. Takes a path noun, returns (unit (unit *)) — three shapes encoding "not for me", "recognized but absent", "recognized and here is the value". See Build / Kernel.

Poke ​

The write arm of a kernel. Takes a cause noun, returns [(list effect) state] — a list of effects for the hull to consume plus the new kernel state. See Build / Kernel.

Verification Gate ​

A parameterized decision function consumed by commitment grafts. Default is hash-comparison; named gates (sig-verify-ed25519, sig-verify-schnorr, manifest-verify, set-membership-verify, bounded-value-verify) ship in vesl-gates.hoon and are selected per-graft via [graft.gates]. A gate is a parameter, not a step in a pipeline. See Build / Kernel — replacing a verification gate.

Versioned-State ​

The kernel's state type. Declared as +$ versioned-state in app.hoon at the nockup:state marker: a tagged record with a head version (%v0, %v1, ...) followed by per-graft state fields and any state your domain adds. Each ++poke arm receives it by value and returns the new version as the tail of [effects new-state]. Bumping the head tag triggers ++load's migration path on resumed snapshots — see nockup:load-defaults in Build / NockApp Anatomy — Anchor Markers.