Writing style — one name per thing
Not published. This is for whoever writes docs or site copy, human or agent.
Why this file exists
A visitor should not have to learn a glossary before they understand what they can build. Zapier sells one noun — a Zap. n8n sells one — a workflow. Neither names its editor in marketing copy.
At one point the homepage used seven nouns for two surfaces: canvas, graph, board, Architect, desk, workspace, visual editor. Each was defensible alone. Together they read as jargon, and they made the docs and the site drift apart.
The list
| Term | Means | Never use for it |
|---|---|---|
| Canoryn | the product | Aura (the old internal name) |
| Workflow | what you build, saved as a .cryn file | agent, graph, blueprint, automation script |
| Architect | the visual builder surface | visual editor, desk, workbench |
| Canvas | the surface inside Architect where nodes live | board, desk |
| Board | a saved arrangement of live nodes, usually browsers — a kind of workflow | canvas, desk |
| Node | one step on a canvas | block, cell, widget |
| Run | one execution of a workflow | job, task, invocation |
| Action | a single capability a node can call | tool, command, function |
| Workspace | your library of workflows | project, folder |
| Agent | an autonomous actor — an AgentOps worker, a logic.agent.reason node — and the market category we sell into | a .cryn |
The two that keep coming back
graph is the internal data model. Users do not build graphs; they build workflows. A graph is how one is stored. If a sentence says "graph" and the reader is not writing code against the file format, it should say "workflow".
The one exception is the CLI and API reference, where graph_id and payload shapes are the actual interface being documented.
agent survives in exactly two places: the category (an "agent workspace" is what the market calls this product) and real autonomous actors (AgentOps workers, logic.agent.reason nodes). It is never a name for a .cryn file. That distinction is the whole point of the rename in canoryn#270 — 272 files — so it is worth keeping.
Two habits worth more than the table
Lead with what the reader can do, not with what we call things. "Describe a workflow and watch it appear" beats "Use Build with chat in the Architect to author a graph on the canvas."
Introduce a word once, then use it. If a page needs a term the reader has not met, define it in the sentence where it first appears — not in a glossary they have to go find. If it needs more than a clause to explain, it is probably the wrong word.
File extension
Write .cryn when the file format is genuinely the subject — the Finder double-click behaviour, the CLI, publishing. In body copy prefer "saved workflow": the claim lands for someone who has not installed the app yet.