Terms you may meet

Use this page when a term appears in the learning path, a question or an evidence package. These explanations describe the project and help readers distinguish benefits; they are not eligibility rules or advice. Official links were checked on 19 September 2026. Current official information can differ from the project's frozen source collection.

Look up a word where it occurs

Start with the reading-help walkthrough. Choose the manual, document and numbered paragraph before selecting an abbreviation. A source occurrence means these exact letters at this location; it is more specific than a dictionary entry. The same letters can have different meanings in different manuals.

The reader separates the original extracted text, a proposed expansion and its review status. A verified text span means that the letters match the frozen source; it does not certify the proposed meaning. Unresolved references remain visible. Small raised numbers normally refer to that paragraph's printed reference list; a matching digit elsewhere is not enough to identify a target. The Chapter 60 demonstration has separately checked body-to-footer pairs.

A shard is a small file containing part of the collection. The reader loads only the selected document and passage files, checks their digital fingerprints (SHA-256 hashes), and keeps a bounded local cache for repeat visits. A failed hash check stops that load. Reading help supplies navigation and explanation; it does not calculate an award or change an evidence package's answerability.

Benefit names

DWP, DMG and ADM

• DWP — Department for Work and Pensions: the department publishing the guidance used here.
• DMG — Decision makers’ guide: published guidance for staff making benefits and pensions decisions. Its presence in the collection does not make every passage applicable to a current case. Official collection.
• ADM — Advice for decision making: a separate DWP guidance family, including guidance for Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment. Check the applicable benefit and regime before choosing a guide. Official ADM publication. The separate ADM acquisition preserves all 182 PDFs listed in the project's 19 September 2026 observation.

PC, SPC, SP and SPA

• PC — Pension Credit; SPC — State Pension Credit: names used for Pension Credit in this project and the guidance. It is separate from State Pension. Official Pension Credit guide.
• SP — State Pension: a state retirement pension. Basic and new State Pension are distinct regimes; the short name alone does not select the rules. Official State Pension guide.
• SPA — State Pension age: the age at which a person can start receiving State Pension, subject to the applicable rules. It is not a single age to assume for everyone. Official age checker.

JSA, IS, ESA and UC

• JSA — Jobseeker’s Allowance: a benefit associated with looking for work. The frozen guidance distinguishes contribution-based JSA (JSA(Cont)) and income-based JSA (JSA(IB)). “New Style” JSA needs its own applicable guidance; do not treat the variants as interchangeable. Official JSA guide.
• IS — Income Support: a benefit name retained in the historical guidance and evaluation questions. Its appearance is not evidence that a new claim is available. Official Income Support page.
• ESA — Employment and Support Allowance: support associated with a health condition or disability affecting work. The frozen sources distinguish contributory ESA (ESA(Cont)) and income-related ESA (ESA(IR)). “New Style” ESA is a further regime distinction to check. Official ESA guide.
• UC — Universal Credit: a separate benefit named in modern guidance and transitions from older benefits. A DMG-only profile does not establish UC rules. Official UC eligibility guide.

“Contribution-based” concerns contribution conditions; “income-related” concerns financial circumstances under the relevant rules. These short descriptions do not replace the full conditions, exceptions or transition provisions.

PIP, DLA, Child DLA and AA

• PIP — Personal Independence Payment: help with extra living costs linked to disability or a long-term health condition. It has its own rules. Official PIP guide.
• DLA — Disability Living Allowance: a benefit name in both adult and child contexts; identify which context and territory is meant. Official adult DLA guide.
• Child DLA: the question set's shorthand for Disability Living Allowance for children. It is not a licence to apply adult DLA or PIP rules to a child. Official child DLA guide.
• AA — Attendance Allowance: a separate disability-related benefit described in its own guidance. Do not confuse it with a similarly named allowance within another scheme. Official AA guide.

Territory matters: services and benefit names can differ within the UK. The official guides provide routes to the relevant administration; this glossary does not map all devolved rules.

IIDB and CA

• IIDB — Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit: a scheme relating to disablement from certain work-related accidents or diseases. Official IIDB guide.
• CA — Carer’s Allowance: a benefit for carers with its own conditions and interactions. It is not the same thing as the benefit received by the person being cared for. Official CA guide.

SDA and War Pensions wording

• SDA: an unresolved abbreviation in the supplied question set. The public evaluation preserves it and requests clarification. Do not silently expand it or substitute a similar-sounding benefit or addition.
• War Pensions: preserve the supplied wording and establish the exact scheme, payment and circumstance before modelling an interaction. The official War Pension Scheme guide is a starting reference; its existence does not resolve the question's intended meaning or supply every interaction rule.

Entitlement, payment and disqualification

• Claimant: a person making or holding a claim. Demonstrations use generic scenarios, not personal claimant records.
• Entitlement: whether the relevant legal conditions for a benefit are met.
• Payment or payability: whether an amount is payable in the circumstances. This is a separate question from entitlement and from the amount of an award.
• Disqualification: exclusion under a specific rule. Read what the rule disqualifies someone from; do not silently replace “receiving” with “being entitled”. The imprisonment acceptance case checks that distinction against the captured guidance.
• Change of circumstance: a change that may require a decision to be reviewed. The relevant effect depends on the benefit, facts, date and applicable rules.
• Exception: a qualification to a general rule that needs its own evidence.

Understanding the evidence

Scope and applicability

Scope is the declared boundary: topic, benefit variant, territory, period and source collection. Applicability asks whether a statement covers the task or circumstances being considered. A paragraph can be accurately quoted yet outside the question's scope.

Provenance and authority

Provenance is the record of where something came from and how it was changed: for example, an official PDF, an extracted page and a project-authored concept. Authority records the standing of the source or assertion. An official source does not make every downstream interpretation official.

• Source-backed: linked to supporting material. This does not by itself mean complete, correctly interpreted or specialist-approved.
• Normalised (normalized in machine fields): transformed into a consistent representation. Here that can include unreviewed machine extraction.
• Inferred or model-derived: proposed through reasoning or AI processing, rather than directly stated as that relationship by the source.
• Unreviewed: the stated specialist or human review has not occurred.
• Locator: a pointer to a specific page or paragraph. A PDF page number can differ from the page number printed within the document.

Dates

Publication date describes when material was published. Capture or observation date describes when the project obtained or checked it. Legal effective date describes when a provision applies. A source update date is yet another event. Do not substitute one date for another; an unknown date should remain unknown.

Snapshot, version and hash

A snapshot preserves material from a particular acquisition. A version identifies a particular release or repository commit. A hash, such as SHA-256, is a calculated fingerprint of bytes used to detect changes. Matching hashes support a claim of identical content; they do not establish truth, currency, rights or legal authority.

Context package, profile and budget

A context package is the evidence and explanatory metadata assembled for one question. A profile declares supported concepts, links and required evidence for a defined task scope. A budget bounds the package, such as record count, relationship count, traversal depth or bytes. Truncation means material was omitted to respect a limit. A client can separately truncate what reaches its AI.

A byte is a unit of stored data. Package bytes include structure and provenance as well as prose. They are not interchangeable with model tokens.

Fail closed

Report insufficient or conflicting evidence when the required support cannot be established. Do not silently fill gaps using model memory or unrelated sources. This makes incompleteness visible; it does not itself answer the substantive question.

Understanding the technology

OKF and OKF plus

OKF — Open Knowledge Format: a way to package inspectable knowledge for people and software. OKF+ here means OKF 0.2 with the project's additional semantic and consumer contracts. It is not a separate claim of complete production assurance. A bundle is the collection of records and supporting files delivered together. See discovery and format choices.

YAML-LD, JSON-LD and RDF

• YAML: a text format commonly used for structured, human-edited data.
• YAML-LD: a YAML representation of linked data. This project's authoring profile uses it to attach stable identities and meanings to records. See the YAML-LD specification and the project's pinned format decisions; use does not imply full processor conformance.
• JSON: a structured data format commonly exchanged by software.
• JSON-LD: linked data expressed in JSON. Its context maps terms to explicit identifiers. W3C JSON-LD specification.
• RDF — Resource Description Framework: a model for statements connecting a subject, a relationship and an object. Different file formats can represent that model. W3C RDF primer.

Concept, ontology and graph

A concept is a named idea. An entity is something individually identified, such as a benefit, document or page. An identifier gives it a stable reference. An ontology describes categories and relationships with defined meanings. A graph represents entities as nodes and relationships as connections.

An assertion is a recorded statement about those entities. A predicate names the relationship, such as “references”. A traversal follows connections to other records. Evidence, status and scope belong alongside an assertion; the existence of a line in a graph does not make it an authoritative conclusion.

An index organises records for lookup. Full-corpus Ask uses an index of words to find candidate pages, alongside the smaller existing concept and relationship index. A word match and a governed relationship serve different purposes: neither alone establishes that all evidence needed for an answer has been found.

Semantic means concerned with meaning: identifying what a term or connection actually denotes. A schema specifies the expected structure of data. A contract records requirements that producers and consumers agree to follow. Metadata describes an item, such as its source, date or format.

API, MCP and WebMCP

• API — application programming interface: a defined way for software to request a capability or data.
• Protocol: agreed rules for exchanging messages. An SDK, or software development kit, supplies reusable code for implementing those rules.
• MCP — Model Context Protocol: a protocol for exposing tools and other capabilities to AI clients. A tool is a named operation with specified inputs and outputs. The Ask OKF remote tool is read-only. MCP specification.
• WebMCP: a browser interface through which a web page exposes tools to supporting agents. It is a developing Community Group specification, not a guarantee that every browser or AI product supports it. WebMCP specification.
• Client / host: the application calling a tool or supplying its result to an AI. Server: the service accepting those calls. Endpoint: the service address used for the calls. Tool availability and complete delivery need actual tests in the intended client.

Read-only means the operation does not change the source records. It does not mean every returned statement is correct. Deterministic means the same specified inputs and software produce the same result; this supports replay but does not prove that the evidence is sufficient.

HTTP, GET, POST and 405

HTTP is the protocol used for web requests; HTTPS protects the connection with encryption. GET usually requests a representation at an address, as when opening a link. POST sends a request body for processing. 405 Method Not Allowed means that the chosen request method is not supported at that address.

Ask OKF's remote endpoint accepts MCP POST calls. A normal GET visit can return 405 even while tool calls work. This is documented in the tested connection guide; the MCP transport specification describes the remote POST transport.

LLM, RAG and token

LLM — large language model: an AI model that processes and generates language. It may reason over an evidence package, but its generated explanation is not the same artefact as that package. RAG — retrieval-augmented generation: supplying retrieved material to a model before it generates a response. Retrieval alone does not establish authority or completeness; Ask OKF adds inspectable selection and evidence requirements. The original RAG research describes the retrieval-and-generation approach.

A token is a unit used by a model's text-processing system. It can represent a word, part of a word or another text fragment. Token counts depend on the model's encoding. This staff-question evaluation measures bytes, not tokens or prices, and does not establish equivalent answer quality or cost savings. See the OpenAI explanation of tokens.

Evaluation, CI, branch and pull request

An evaluation checks defined expectations against retained results. A rubric states what those results must demonstrate. A replay reruns checks against saved inputs and responses; a receipt records what was observed and which versions were used.

CI — continuous integration: automated checks run as changes are integrated. A repository stores the project's files and history. A branch holds a line of changes; a pull request (PR) presents proposed changes for review before they are merged. Branch protection requires selected conditions before updates to a branch. See this repository's actual settings.

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