Glossary

Agent (LeanSignal Agent) — the edge collector: a custom OpenTelemetry Collector distribution, deployed one per cluster or environment, that indexes everything, stores it locally, and forwards only the demanded subset. Also called the gateway, after its role — other collectors and SDKs send telemetry to it. See Manage agents.

Agent key — the per-agent credential that authenticates it to your tenant. Admin-visible only; one connection per key. See Agent configuration.

Bundle — the portable JSON form of a demand (demand + dashboards + alert rules, secrets stripped, channels by name). Produced by export, consumed by import and the catalog. See Work with demands.

Catalog — the published library of ready-made demands, browsable in the app (Demands → Import from catalog…) and on the Integrations pages.

Control center — cc.leansignal.io: accounts, sign-in, tenants, and organisations. See Accounts & authentication.

Cost–value link — the property that every stored signal is tied to the declared need it serves, so spend can be attributed to value and retiring a need retires its cost. The point of the whole model.

Dataplane — your tenant’s central telemetry stores (metrics, logs, traces), retained for 30 days. Receives only the demanded subset; serves dashboard views and alert evaluation.

Demand — a declared need for telemetry; the aggregate root that owns dashboards and alert rules. See The demand model.

Demand set — the derived list of telemetry agents must forward: metric names (dashboards’ ∪ active alerts’), plus the log stream selectors and trace service selectors of saved dashboards and ingestion rules. Pushed to agents in near real time; browsable as the Filters tab on the Demands page.

Demanded subset — the portion of everything your systems emit that the demand set selects; the only telemetry that leaves the edge.

Edge buffer (local store) — the agent’s co-located stores holding everything at full fidelity for a short window: VictoriaMetrics for metrics (one day), Loki for logs and Tempo for traces (roughly one hour each). Powers discovery, edit-mode previews, and the Explore pages’ Available source.

Ingestion rule — a selector added directly on the Logs, Metrics, or Traces page (attached to a demand) to forward telemetry without building a dashboard for it. For traces, each rule also owns its stored spans — see Traces.

Instance label — the label a dashboard’s Instance filter uses to tell instances apart (instance, host_name, leansignal_agent_name, …). See each integration’s Multiple instances note.

Integration — a ready-made demand for a specific technology, published in three variants.

Pain cycle / value cycle — the two loops contrasted in Architecture: store everything → bill shock → reactive pruning, versus demand governing the pipeline.

Purge — the enforcement of nothing undemanded is stored: when a selector leaves the demand set, the stored data no surviving selector matches is deleted after a grace window (24 h default). Collect garbage on the Demands page’s Purge tab is the on-demand complement — a mark-and-sweep that removes anything in central storage no demand covers. Demanded data is never purged, however quiet; it leaves only via the 30-day retention. See Purge.

Slug — the stable identifier of a published catalog variant (host-metrics-otel-demand-standard); also the bundle’s file name under /demands/.

Stored vs Available — the two sources on the Metrics, Logs, and Traces pages: Stored reads the dataplane (demanded subset, 30-day retention); Available reads the agent’s edge buffer live (everything, short window). See Metrics.

Stream selector — the label-matcher part of a log query ({service_name="checkout"}); the unit of log demand — a saved log panel demands its selectors. See Logs.

Service selector — the resource-scoped part of a trace query ({resource.service.name="checkout"}); the unit of trace demand — a saved trace panel demands the services it names, and the agent forwards all of their spans. See Traces.

Tenant — an isolated LeanSignal environment with its own URL, backend, and telemetry storage. See Tenants & workspaces.

Variant — the size tier of an integration — Essential, Standard, or Extended, each a superset of the previous.

Workspace — a tenant, seen from a user’s perspective: the set of tenants an account belongs to appears as Workspaces in the app.