# Core concepts

Source: https://cohalen.com/docs/concepts



Cohalen has a small, fixed vocabulary. The app and these docs use these words the
same way.

## Repository [#repository]

The connected git source your workspaces branch from. On your machine it's your own
clone, a folder on disk. Across an organization it's shared as a reference, a name
and a remote, and everyone keeps their own clone.

## Workspace [#workspace]

One unit of parallel work: an isolated git worktree, its branch, a running
environment, and an agent chat. Everything downstream follows from it, the review,
the checks, the pull request. You run many at once, each with one agent in it.

## Changeset [#changeset]

Every file one agent changed in one task, measured against the workspace's base
branch. That means commits on the branch plus edits it hasn't committed yet, which
is exactly what the pull request will contain.

You read it as a whole. **Review** shows you one changeset at a time. It isn't a
general multi-commit browser.

## Checks and the Verdict [#checks-and-the-verdict]

**Checks** is your last look before you ship. It gathers everything that decides
whether a workspace can merge: git status, check runs, deployments, notes, todos.

All of it comes down to one sentence at the top, the verdict, something like
`Uncommitted changes` or `Ready to merge`. If something's blocking the merge, the
verdict says what, and how many are left. You won't find a progress percentage
here. It's a sentence, and it picks the one action you can take right now.

## Ship [#ship]

The fourth stage and the finish line: commit, pull request, merge, run through git
and your GitHub connection. The verdict gives you one action at a time, and a step
that fails shows up in **Checks** instead of passing quietly.

## Organization and Members [#organization-and-members]

An organization is a team of signed-in members. It owns the shared repositories and
workspaces, and it draws the line on who sees what: you see your organization's
work and nothing else.

### Owner [#owner]

The member who launched a workspace. Only the owner can run things in it:
prompting the agent, the Editor, the Terminal. Where the workspace executes, the
owner's machine or a [box](/docs/cloud) in the owner's own vendor account, is a
separate question; who owns it doesn't change with the answer.

### Remote Workspace [#remote-workspace]

A workspace someone else owns, mirrored into your client read-only. The chat and
the diff stream in live, so you can read a teammate's work as it happens. Only
its owner can run anything in it.

<Callout>
  "Remote" says whose workspace it is, not where it executes. Every workspace in
  an organization is visible to the team; a remote one is a teammate's.
</Callout>

## Box [#box]

The machine a workspace runs on when it doesn't run on the owner's machine: one
per workspace, created in the owner's own sandbox vendor account and destroyed
with the workspace. Picked before the first prompt, for the workspace's life.
The workspace is the same workspace wherever it runs; see
[running in the cloud](/docs/cloud).

## Spend kill-switch [#spend-kill-switch]

The per-workspace budget meter, or in plain words the spend cap. When a turn's
spend crosses the cap, the turn stops and the workspace waits for you. A
workspace you left running unattended stops there.

The [spend page](/docs/spend) owns the mechanism, what the meter covers, and
where the rest of the money shows: what each box costs, the Shipped, Wasted,
and Open split, and your revenue on the same timeline.