Glossary
The words that show up across these docs, defined once. Terms are grouped so related ideas sit together.
People & roles
Agile lead : You. The human who leads a hybrid team through the BMAD method — steering the agents, reviewing their work, and deciding when something is ready to move on. (We say agile lead, not "user" or "developer.")
Hybrid team : A team made of humans and AI agents working together. In the simplest case that's one agile lead plus their coding agents; at larger scale, several agile leads each running their own agent team.
Agent : A conversational BMAD persona with a specialty and a voice — the Analyst, Product Manager, UX Designer, Architect, Engineer, Test Architect, and Technical Writer. You launch an agent as a slash command. → Meet the agents
Brian Madison : Creator of the BMAD method, which he released as 100% open source.
The method
The BMAD method (or just "the method") : The AI-native development workflow these docs teach: four phases, a team of agents, and a trail of artifacts. → What is the BMAD method?
Phase (of the method) : One of the four stages a project moves through — Analysis → Planning → Solutioning → Implementation. → Overview
Artifact
: A durable document a phase produces — a brief, a PRD, an architecture doc, a
story spec. Artifacts carry context forward so nothing is re-derived from memory.
They live under _bmad-output/.
Product brief : The Analysis-phase artifact that captures the problem, target users, goals, success metrics, scope, and risks. → Analysis
PRFAQ : A "Working Backwards" alternative to the product brief — a press-release + FAQ that stress-tests a concept before you commit. → Analysis
PRD (Product Requirements Document) : The Planning-phase artifact that says what to build and why, framed around Jobs-to-be-Done. → Planning
UX design : The Planning-phase artifact (when there's a UI): user journeys and interface specifications. → Planning
Spine (architecture spine) : The lean set of invariants the Architecture phase produces — the rules every epic and story must respect, so independently built parts stay consistent. You architect the spine and defer the rest. → Solutioning
ADR (Architecture Decision Record) : A short document recording one architectural decision and its rationale — a supporting artifact of the Solutioning phase.
Epic : A large slice of work that groups related stories toward a shared outcome.
Story : A small, independently shippable unit of work. Each story has a spec file carrying the context the engineer agent needs. → Epics & stories
Story cycle : The repeating implementation loop: create → develop → review, looping back to develop if review finds issues, then on to the next story. → Implementation
Story lifecycle / phases : The five phases a story moves through on the board: Backlog → Ready → In Progress → Review → Done. BMAD Board tracks stories by phase (there are no kanban lane columns).
Sprint plan (sprint-status.yaml)
: The Implementation-phase artifact that orders the stories the agents work
through in sequence.
Readiness check
: The gate (/bmad-check-implementation-readiness) that confirms the PRD, UX,
architecture, and stories all align before implementation begins.
Retrospective
: The epic-end review of completed work and lessons learned, run with
/bmad-retrospective.
Quality
TEA (Test Architecture / Test Architect) : The BMAD quality discipline — and Murat, the agent who owns it. Risk-based: test effort goes where the risk is. → Quality & testing
Quality gate
: The advisory epic-level decision (from /bmad-testarch-trace) that reports
whether an epic is safe to close, with a verdict of PASS / CONCERNS / FAIL /
WAIVED / NOT_EVALUATED. It informs; it doesn't hard-block — an agile lead can
waive it with rationale.
ATDD (Acceptance-Test-Driven Development) : Writing acceptance tests before the code, so the definition of done is executable.
NFR (Non-Functional Requirement)
: A quality attribute like performance, security, reliability, or scalability —
audited with /bmad-testarch-nfr.
BMAD Board
BMAD Board : The local-first desktop app that visualizes and runs the BMAD method — the visual cockpit. → What is BMAD Board?
Visual cockpit : What BMAD Board is — the place you see your epics and stories and drive the agents from. (We say visual cockpit, not "dashboard.")
Embedded terminal : The Warp-style, tabbed terminal inside BMAD Board where agents run. → Terminal & providers
LLM provider : The AI CLI an agent runs on. The board ships built-in support for Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Aider, and Open Code, and works with any other CLI that supports the BMAD method. Commands are provider-agnostic; the board translates them.
Command Palette
: The Cmd+K quick launcher for commands and navigation.
Worktree : A git worktree BMAD Board creates per story so each story develops in isolation on its own branch. Worktrees are the default substrate. → Documents, git & history
Intake : The BMAD Board view for capturing raw ideas before they become stories.
Mandate : A Pro feature that grants your team the authority to finish work uninterrupted (autonomous task completion). (We say Mandate, not "autopilot.")