Glossary

This page is a reference: short definitions of the terms used in these docs, in alphabetical order. Terms from the retired af CLI (IPFS sites, IPNS, ENS, Filecoin, Arweave, functions) are covered in What changed from af.

Access token

A personal access token (PAT) that authenticates as you without a browser. Used by CI, scripts, agents, and the SDK. Created with acc pat create, passed as AF_TOKEN. See Create and use access tokens.

Active project

The project the CLI acts on. Shown by acc whoami, changed with acc projects switch, overridden by AF_PROJECT_ID.

Admin

An organization role that can deploy and manage members but not billing. See Roles.

Attestation

Cryptographic proof, produced by the hardware, of exactly what code a confidential service is running. Fetch and verify it with acc attest.

Auto stop

A spend control that stops a service after a fixed runtime (--stop-hours, --stop-days). The projected cost is reserved from your balance up front.

Bid

A provider's offer to run your deployment at a price. A new deployment waits for bids, then the platform selects one.

Budget cap

A spend control that stops a service when its total (--budget-total) or monthly (--budget-monthly) spend reaches the cap.

Confidential compute

Running a service inside a trusted execution environment (TEE) so that nobody, including the provider, can read its memory. Enabled with --confidential.

Credits

Prepaid US dollars in an organization's wallet, spent as services run. Topped up by card or stablecoin. See How billing works.

Custom domain

Your own domain name pointed at a service instead of the default <slug>-app.alternatefutures.ai URL. Not available yet; the guide for the retired sites flow is archived.

Deployment

One release of a service. Redeploying creates a new deployment; the previous one is closed. Listed with acc deployments.

Docker image

A packaged application that a service runs, named like nginx:1.27. Use a versioned tag; providers cache images by tag.

Environment variable

A configuration value passed to a running service, such as an API key. Set with --env KEY=VALUE or acc services env set.

GPU

A graphics processor attached to a service for inference or training, chosen by model and count (--gpu-model h100 --gpu-count 1). Billed by the hour.

Member

An organization role that can deploy and view. A member can be limited to selected projects.

Organization

The owner of billing, credits, and members. Every account has a personal organization; teams are additional organizations. See Accounts, organizations, and projects.

Owner

The organization role with full control, including billing and deleting the organization.

Pay as you go

The default spend control: no cap, pay for what you use.

Project

A workspace that groups related services inside an organization. See Manage projects.

Provider

An independent operator that runs your workloads. The platform picks one for each deployment based on region, resources, and price.

Region

Where a service runs: us-east, us-west, eu, asia, or Any (cheapest available). acc regions shows availability and pricing.

Seat

The unit a subscription is priced in, one per person in the organization.

Service

One deployed thing: a container from a Docker image, a template instance, or an empty server. Holds region, resources, environment variables, spend controls, and a URL. Managed with acc services.

Service link

A connection between two services in the same project that exposes the target's address to the source as environment variables. Created with acc services link.

Slug

The short name in a service's URL, https://<slug>-app.alternatefutures.ai.

Spend control

A per-service limit, enforced by the platform: pay as you go, budget cap, or auto stop.

Subscription

The monthly or yearly plan an organization pays per seat. It sets the markup applied to usage. See How billing works.

Suspended

A service paused because the organization's credits ran low. It resumes automatically after a topup.

TEE

Trusted execution environment: a hardware-isolated part of a processor whose memory the host cannot read. The basis of confidential compute.

Template

A ready-made service definition (an AI agent, a database, an inference server) that you deploy with a few settings. Browse with acc templates list.

Trial

The first 14 days of a new account, with deploys allowed and no card required.

Wallet

Two meanings: the organization's credit wallet that pays for usage, and an Ethereum wallet you can sign in with instead of an email.