# Assistant terminology — one word per thing (2026-08)

Task 13.2 of `EVE_DEEP_TEST_AND_POLISH_TODOS_2026-08-04.md`. Derived from
[`V1/BRAND.md`](../../V1/BRAND.md), which is the authority; this file is the
working table for the assistant surfaces and the rule each lock enforces.

The problem this closes is not untidiness. Ruling the 13.1 string inventory
turned up **62 member-facing strings that call Lilith "the assistant"** against
28 that call her Lilith — and the disagreement is usually inside one file, on
one screen, sometimes in one sentence: `indicators.ts` explains persona identity
twice, once as _"Lilith is answering without one of her named guides"_ and once
as _"The assistant speaks generically without a named guide"_. A member who is
introduced to Lilith and then reads about "the assistant" has been handed two
names for one thing and has to work out that they are the same.

## The table

| Thing                     | Canonical, member-facing                 | Off-terms that must not refer to it                                            | Where the other word is still correct                                                                      |
| ------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| The assistant             | **Lilith**, or first person (I/me/my)    | "the assistant", "AI assistant", "Copilot", "the system", "the bot", **"Eve"** | Operator and studio surfaces: **"copilot"**, platform-branded (BRAND.md). The disclosure sentence below.   |
| A guided walk of a screen | **tour**                                 | "walkthrough", "tutorial", "spotlight tour"                                    | —                                                                                                          |
| The catalogue walk        | **audit** (a **run**, walking **flows**) | "sweep", "review pass", "coverage crawl"                                       | "walk" as the verb of an audit ("the audit walks every flow") is the established phrasing and stays        |
| A captured piece of work  | **work item**                            | "task", "ticket", "issue" as the noun for the tracked thing                    | Builder-side only; no member surface names one. "log an issue" stays as the member's verb for creating one |
| A recorded choice         | **decision**                             | "ADR" on any surface a member or operator reads                                | `ADR` inside the builder graph explorer, where it is the artifact's own name                               |
| One of the six rooms      | **room**                                 | "domain" in member prose                                                       | `domain` in ids, routes, types, and the audit catalog's structural nodes — it is the codebase's word       |

## The one sanctioned "AI assistant"

BRAND.md requires the honesty disclosure to stay explicit:

> Responses come from Lilith, an AI assistant — not a human operator.

So **"assistant" is legal as a common-noun descriptor after her name, and never
as her name.** "Lilith, an AI assistant" is right; "the assistant", "Open AI
assistant", "Ask assistant" are not. The locks encode exactly that distinction
rather than banning the word, because banning the word would delete the one
sentence that has to say it.

## What "member surface" means here

Everything a member can reach: the panel and its dock, the shell chrome, the
settings and profile surfaces, disclosure chips and indicators, tours, the audit
board, and the invocation-point labels and accessible names that any of those
render. It does **not** include:

- **Operator and studio surfaces**, which keep platform branding and the copilot
  name — `indicators.ts` and `persona-handoffs.ts` carry admin entries in the
  same catalogues as member ones, and those are correct as they are.
- **Model-facing text**: tool descriptions, input schemas, tool results, system
  prompt frames. The model is not a member. (It does have its own rule — the
  tool contract already tells it never to write a path or a domain id into a
  reply.)
- **Thrown errors in client libraries**, because the panel renders its own copy
  for a failed turn rather than the exception's message.

## "Eve" must appear nowhere a member can see

Eve is the builder-side assistant. BRAND.md: _never shown to members_. This is
checked two ways, because source and screen are different questions:

1. A source sweep over the member-facing modules (a string can be in the tree
   without rendering, and a rendered string can be composed from parts).
2. **A case-insensitive sweep of the rendered text of every member route**,
   which is the check task 13.2 asks for by name — source greps cannot see a
   name that arrives from an API payload or a persona record.

The word survives in code identifiers, comments, file names, the workbench and
the intent ledger, all of which are builder-side and all of which BRAND.md
leaves alone.

## Standing item: room vs domain

Twenty-five strings with a `keep` verdict still say "domain", almost all of them
in the audit catalog's step actions ("Open the domain switcher", "Switch between
domains", "Enter a domain"). The tour narration for the _same control_ says
_"This switcher moves you between my rooms"_. That is a real second vocabulary
and it is recorded here rather than fixed in 13.2, which is scoped to the
assistant's own name: the catalog's nodes are structural (their ids are
`shell.navigation.domain-switch`), and changing prose that quotes an id is a
larger edit than this task should absorb quietly. **13.3 owns it.**