Reference

Glossary

Lattice

A board. The word is literal: cards sit on a grid formed by two facets, one driving the rows and one driving the columns. If you know Trello or Jira, a lattice is what you would call a board, with a second axis.

Facet

A way of classifying cards — Status, Priority, Owner, Quarter. A facet is roughly what other tools call a field, a property or a label set, with one difference: any facet can be put on an axis, used as a card colour, an icon, a dot or a pill, and moved between those roles without touching a single card.

Facet value

One option inside a facet. "In Progress" is a value of the Status facet; "P1" is a value of Priority. Values carry their own colour and icon, which is what makes a board readable at a glance.

Card

One item of work or content: a task, a candidate, an article, a game. A card holds a title, a description, images, comments and a value for each facet it is assigned to. Its position on the grid is not stored separately — it IS its facet values.

Cell

The intersection of one row value and one column value. Dropping a card into a cell assigns both values at once, which is why a single drag does what two dropdowns would do elsewhere.

Space

The tenant boundary — what other tools call a workspace or an organisation. Every board, facet and card belongs to exactly one space, billing is per space, and the database enforces the boundary rather than the application code.

Pattern

A reusable facet. Promote a facet to a pattern and you can attach it to as many boards as you like and edit it in one place; every board using it updates. Personal patterns are a Pro feature, shared team patterns a Team one.

Pivot

Swapping which facet drives the rows and which drives the columns. The same cards answer a different question, nothing is duplicated, and every card keeps both of its values. This is the interaction the whole product is built around.

Spine

The coloured edge on a card, driven by whichever facet you have chosen as the colour facet. It lets a card carry a third dimension of meaning without occupying an axis.

Date facet

A facet whose values are dates rather than options. Put one on an axis and that axis becomes a timeline, with cards rendered as span bars across day, week, month, quarter or year buckets. Spans snap to whole buckets — this is a timeline, not a scheduling engine: no dependencies and no critical path.

Ghost card

When a card has several values for the facet on an axis, it belongs in several cells at once. One placement shows the full card and the others render a faded copy, so a multi-valued card is visible everywhere it belongs without being duplicated. A per-person display setting, available on every plan — not to be confused with presence.

Presence

Seeing who else has the board open, and watching the card a teammate is moving travel under their cursor in real time. A Team-plan feature, and distinct from live sync, which pushes content changes to everyone on Pro and Team.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

The open protocol AI clients such as Claude and Cursor use to call external tools. Glattice runs a remote MCP server behind OAuth 2.1, so an agent can read and write the same boards you do, with your permissions, through the same public REST API the web app uses.

Change history

An append-only record of every change to a board: who made it, when, and from which interface — the browser, the REST API, MCP, or the built-in AI bar. Nothing can edit it, including us. Thirty days on Free, a year on Pro, unlimited on Team.