| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Alert | The role that evaluates alert rules, drives escalations, renders scheduled reports, and runs connectors. See Role-based deployment. |
| API token | A bearer credential of the form ms_<prefix>_<secret> that acts as a user or a service account. See Identity & access. |
| APM | Application performance monitoring. Bounded service, transaction, dependency, error, and version aggregates derived from trace spans. See APM. |
| Arrow Flight SQL | The SQL protocol on port 5083 for database clients such as DBeaver, JDBC, and ADBC. Disabled by default. See Connect with a database client. |
| Catalog | The record in PostgreSQL of which Parquet files and indexes belong to each stream. |
| Cipher key | The root key in MS_CIPHER_KEY that encrypts the secrets MoleSignal stores in PostgreSQL. See Production checklist. |
| Compaction | Merging small Parquet files into larger ones. The compactor role runs it together with retention. |
| Connector | A managed integration with an external platform. A source brings logs in, pulled on a schedule or pushed by the platform, and a destination receives pipeline output. See Connectors. |
| Datasource | An entry of the Datasource catalog that generates the endpoint, token, and configuration snippet for one source. See Datasource. |
| Escalation policy | Ordered notification targets with acknowledgement timeouts. See Alerting. |
| Extend table | A key-to-record lookup table that a pipeline uses to enrich events. See Extend tables. |
| Federated query | A query that also scans remote clusters, selected with ?clusters=local,<name>. See Role-based deployment. |
| Flush | Writing the in-memory buffer of an intake node to Parquet files and indexes in object storage. |
| Function | A reusable transform written in VRL or JavaScript. See Functions. |
| Incident | An alert occurrence that moves through acknowledgement and resolution. See Alerting. |
| Intake | The path that receives telemetry. Also the role that validates, buffers, and flushes it. See Datasource. |
| Intake token | A token with the streams.write and apm.deploy permissions that senders and deployment pipelines use. See Datasource. |
| Log inspection | A report that Mole Agent writes about the logs of a period, on demand or on a schedule. See Log inspections. |
| Mole Agent | The embedded operations agent that investigates issues through the tool catalog. See Mole Agent. |
| On-call schedule | A timezone-aware rotation with overrides that escalations target. See Alerting. |
| Organization | The tenant and policy boundary. The web UI calls it a workspace. See Core concepts. |
| Parquet | The columnar file format in which MoleSignal stores logs, metrics, and traces. |
| Pipeline | A chain of steps that routes, normalizes, redacts, and enriches events, either in realtime during intake or on a schedule. See Pipelines. |
| Platform administrator | The user, taken from [auth].root_email, that manages platform-wide settings. |
| Probe Agent | A process that runs synthetic checks from a location. A built-in agent runs on standalone nodes. See Synthetic monitoring. |
| Role | A process role selected with [node].roles: standalone, router, intake, querier, compactor, or alert. Also a named bundle of permissions in IAM. |
| RUM | Real User Monitoring of browser and mobile app sessions. See RUM. |
| RUM client token | A token with the rum.write permission, bound to one application, that browser and mobile code sends. |
| Saved view | A stored query with its time range and options. |
| Search job | A durable asynchronous query. Queries above the size threshold become search jobs, listed under Streams → Search jobs. See Query. |
| Self-telemetry | The metrics, traces, and profiles that MoleSignal records about itself in the reserved _molesignal stream. See Self-observability. |
| Service account | A non-human identity for collectors and automation. It cannot sign in. See Identity & access. |
| Silence | A time-boxed rule that pauses notifications for matching alerts. See Alerting. |
| Standalone | The default role that runs every role in one process. |
| Status page | A public or private page that shows component status and incidents. See Status pages. |
| Stream | The typed contract of a signal: a name, a type, a schema, and retention. See Streams. |
| Stream type | One of logs, metrics, traces, profiles, or extend. |
| Synthetic monitor | A scheduled check, such as an HTTP request, that records availability and latency. See Synthetic monitoring. |
| VRL | Vector Remap Language, one of the languages for pipeline functions. |
| WAL | The write-ahead log on the local disk of an intake node. It holds records until they are flushed. |
| Workspace | The name that the web UI uses for the selected organization. |
Resources
Glossary
Definitions of the terms that MoleSignal documentation and the product use.
Last modified on October 26, 2026