Glossary

One definition per term. Capitalization marks a term that names one of the three ASO roles.

Adapter — A located element (or family of elements) that bridges the State and one foreign protocol — a system or a person — carrying the protocol's state as attributes and provisions, its occurrences as events, and its other machinery privately. On the web: a custom or native element.

ASO — Adapter, State, Orchestrator. The application architecture implemented by the Nucleus Stack.

Addressability — Any part of the State can be named. On the web, by a CSS selector. A precondition for orchestration.

Binding — A $variable value a Quark rule stores on an element, readable by that element and its descendants, across sheets.

Catalyst — Whatever originates change: a user action, a network response, a timer. Adapters originate change; rules respond.

Closed under derivation — Every fact in the State traces back to somewhere else in the State, with computation allowed in between. Nothing originates outside it.

Command — An imperative aimed at one element, carried by the platform's command event (CommandEvent): non-bubbling, cancelable, with a --verb name (--submit, --reload) and a source. Invoked by <button command commandfor>, <event-handler command-name>, or script; handled with Neutron onCommand. Not State (it describes no fact) and not an announcement.

Content — In Quark, the content: property: text, a cloned <template>, a fetched fragment, an iteration, trusted HTML, or a node a module function built.

Default action — What an element does after firing a cancelable event unless a listener synchronously calls preventDefault(). The escape hatch for customizing an Adapter without forking it.

Effect — In Neutron, the plain object (or array of objects) a lifecycle or method returns, describing what should happen (prop values, emit, style, listeners) instead of mutating the element directly.

Element base — A composable Neutron builder that encodes a shared contract (abortable-element, fetchable-element, renderable-element, listenable-element, routable-element). Opt-in.

Family — A root Adapter plus its sub-adapters, sharing a name prefix: content-tabs / content-tabs-header / content-tabs-body.

Host — The parent element of a <quark-sheet>. The sheet's rules match only inside it, unless is-global attr is set. The host itself is reachable via :scope.

Iteration — iterate(array or object): stamps one copy of an element's <template> per item, exposing item and index to rules.

Neutron — The declarative factory for building custom elements as Adapters. Optional; an ASO app can use only native elements or other Custom Element constructors, so long as the elements themselves adhere to the Adapter definition.

Neutron element — Any custom element built with the Neutron factory, whether it ships in NucleusKit or the app author wrote it.

NucleusKit — The package that bundles the whole stack behind one import: nucleus-kit.

NucleusKit element — One of the drop-in custom elements in the NucleusKit catalog (content-drawer, super-form, spa-route, …). Each is also published on its own.

Nucleus Stack — The whole combination: NucleusKit elements + Neutron + Quark + Valence.css + Nucleus DevTools, published as @excom/*.

Option attribute — An attribute the author sets to configure an element (api-url, lazy-load).

Orchestrator — A declarative, selector-driven observer that watches the State for changes and writes coordinated changes back into it, holding no state of its own. On the web: Quark.

Protocol — What an Adapter bridges to the State: a system (network, storage, sensor, clock, history, viewport) or a person (pointer, keyboard, focus, the accessibility tree). One protocol per Adapter.

Provision — Rich data an Adapter publishes on itself (a parsed response, route params). Adapter-owned, published rather than authored. Read in Quark with prop("provision").

Pure function — A JavaScript function that takes values and returns values without side effects. The preferred shape for everything imported via @use.

Quark — The CSS-derived orchestration language and runtime. Sheets of rules that select elements and write attributes, content, listeners, and variables.

Recognized elements — The descendants an element wires up automatically (super-form recognizes your <form>). Listed on each package page.

Rule — A selector plus declarations. Runs whenever a matched element's referenced attributes or bindings change. Does not revert on unmatch.

Rule reversion — CSS behavior in which a declaration stops applying when its selector stops matching. Quark does not do this; write the inverse rule.

Scope — The subtree a sheet may affect. Sheets are implicitly wrapped in @scope { } anchored at the host; is-global opts out.

Serializability — The whole State can be written out and shipped fully formed. A requirement, not a convenience.

Quark Sheet — A <quark-sheet> (inline or src-url) or a programmatic Quark instance: one unit of orchestration.

element.quark — The JS side of $variables: setProperty / setProperties / removeProperty / getPropertyValue on any element, shaped like element.style. The element written to becomes the binding's owner.

State — An application's living, structured, declarative body of data — the single source of truth - that is simultaneously what the application reads and presents. On the web: the document.

State attribute — An attribute an element writes about itself (is-loading, did-fail, has-rendered). What CSS and Quark select on.

Sub-adapter — A dependent part of an Adapter family that cannot operate alone. It adapts input at its own node and announces upward; the root keeps the family's state coherent and may write it.

Super element — A super-* element that wraps and upgrades a native element the author still writes (super-form, super-input).

Tag alias — A .tag-* class in Valence.css that lends a native tag's look to any element (<my-card class="tag-article">). Every alias has a matching ARIA role; prefer the role.

Template method — The architectural pattern behind an Adapter's customization surfaces: the Adapter owns the algorithm; attributes, events, and default actions are the hooks.

Unified surface — The State is simultaneously the source of truth and the presented artifact. ASO's headline property.

Valence.css — The stack's semantic, classless CSS with --v-* tokens, [data-scheme] light/dark, role and tag aliases, and opt-outs. Proud fork of the brilliant Pico.css.

View — An HTML fragment that owns its CSS and its Quark sheet, loaded by include-content or spa-route. The stack's replacement for components; always the app author's, never shipped with the stack.

@use — Quark's module import statement: @use "/utils.js" as *; exposes a module's exports to sheet expressions and event handlers.