Glossary

Adapter

A small set of extra weights, here a LoRA adapter, that changes a model's behaviour when loaded on top of the base weights. Stored as adapter_model.safetensors.

Base model

The open-weight checkpoint a patch was trained and evaluated on, identified by a Hugging Face repository and a full commit hash. Retoque never redistributes it.

Canonical JSON

JSON with sorted keys, no extra spaces and UTF-8 text, so the same data always produces the same bytes and the same sha256.

Compatibility preflight

The CLI's comparison of your --model reference with the manifest. The outcome is SUPPORTED_EXACT, UNKNOWN_UNTESTED or INCOMPATIBLE. See Concepts.

Entitlement

Retoque's record that an account holds a license to one version. The download route checks it. See Licenses and entitlements.

Escrow

The period after a paid onchain purchase when the funds stay in the license market contract and can still be refunded. Seven days by default.

Evidence state

The single label each version carries about how far its results have been checked: VERIFIED_FOR_SCOPE, IMPROVED_ON_SCOPE, EVALUATED, EXPERIMENTAL, DEGRADED or WITHDRAWN. See Concepts.

Experimental override

The --experimental-override flag, which installs a patch outside its tested compatibility envelope. It is recorded in retoque.lock.

Family

A label on each dataset row naming the template or source it came from. Splits are made by whole families so near-duplicates never cross a split.

Held-out suite

The evaluation cases kept out of training and development. The only result a published version may cite. Sealed: the cases aren't published, their sha256 is.

Install ticket

A short-lived response to POST .../install-tickets holding a single-use download link that expires after five minutes.

License terms

The written terms for a version, shipped as LICENSE.txt. Their sha256 is the terms digest you accept.

Lockfile

retoque.lock, written in the current directory by install and rollback. It pins each patch to exact digests.

LoRA

Low-rank adaptation. A way to fine-tune a model by training small extra matrices instead of the full weights.

Manifest

retoque.manifest.json: the canonical JSON description of a version, including every file's sha256 and size. Its sha256 is what the publisher signs.

Patch

A named fix for one task on one base model, distributed as signed versions.

PEFT

Hugging Face's Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning library, which loads LoRA adapters. The runtime published evaluations use.

Prompt-only control

An evaluation arm that runs the base model with three worked examples in the system prompt, to show whether a cheaper prompt change matches the patch.

Registry key

A key starting with rtq_ that authenticates the CLI to the Retoque registry. Not a model API key.

Regression suite

general-regression-v1, 60 unrelated cases used to count behaviour a patch breaks.

Rollback

Switching the active version back to an earlier installed one, or disabling the adapter so the base model runs alone.

Safetensors

A weights file format that holds only tensors and can't execute code when loaded, unlike pickle.

Settlement

Moving a paid purchase out of escrow so the creator and the treasury can withdraw their shares. Anyone can trigger it after the window.

Version key

The registry contract's identifier for one version: a hash of the chain ID, publisher, patch ID, semver and adapter digest.