Quasar product guide
Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the words Quasar uses, grouped by theme: work tracking (issue, epic, status, workflow, backlog, inbox, deadline), planning (sprint, story points, velocity, work kind), money and delivery (work log, quote, release, revision, acceptance), the asset library and artifacts, versions in git (version branch, hotfix, release tag), agents and access (agent, MCP, API key, service account, work session, pre-analysis), and the organization (tenant, operator, public publication, product guide). Read it to decode a term used elsewhere in this guide or in the product.
The words Quasar uses, as of version 2026.10.15.
| Word | Meaning |
|---|
| Issue | One unit of work: a feature, a bug, a task. Each has a readable key such as ABC-00042. |
| Project | A container for issues and documents. Projects can hold sub-projects. |
| Epic | An issue that groups related issues around a theme. Its progress is the progress of the issues under it. |
| Story, Task, Bug, Sub-task | The kinds of issue: something a user wants, work to be done, something broken, a small step inside one of these. |
| Status | Where an issue is now: Backlog, To do, In progress, Testing, In review, Done, Reopened. An organization can rename them. |
| Workflow | The rules for which status may follow which, and on what conditions. |
| Resolution | Why an issue is Done: Fixed, Won't fix, Duplicate, Cannot reproduce or Incomplete. |
| Section | A typed part of an issue, such as its pre-analysis, decisions or verification. |
| Definition of Done | A checklist an issue must satisfy before it is finished. |
| Backlog | Work not started yet. Different from unplanned, which is work in no sprint. |
| Inbox | A project's notes for requests nobody has decided on yet, later turned into issues or discarded. |
| Deadline | A dated fact from outside that may break something, such as a certificate expiry or a provider's change, with reminders before it falls due. |
| Word | Meaning |
|---|
| Sprint | A fixed stretch of time that a set of issues is planned into. |
| Story points | A rough size for an issue: how big, not how many hours. |
| Velocity | How much delivery work sprints complete. Investigation, technical and management work are reported beside it, not in it. |
| Work kind | What an issue's work produces: delivery, investigation, technical or management. |
| Board | The card view of a sprint, one column per status. |
| Critical path | The chain of work whose delay delays the whole project, shown on the Gantt chart. |
| Word | Meaning |
|---|
| Work log | Time spent on an issue, at the hourly rate in effect when it was logged. |
| Quote | A priced offer for a client, built from issues and their estimates. Frozen once sent. |
| Acceptance | A person's approval of a document or a release revision. It binds to the exact text it was given on. |
| Release | A frozen set of documentation published in numbered revisions. |
| Revision | One version of a release, such as Rev. 2. Once published it never changes; changes go into the next revision. |
| Summary | A short text on every document and chapter saying what it covers, so a reader or an agent can judge it without opening it. |
| Word | Meaning |
|---|
| Asset | One thing kept in a project's library, such as a logo or a screenshot, with all its files. |
| Variant | One file of an asset: a size, a theme, a language. |
| Artifact | Something a version delivers: a package, a binary, a container image or an archive. Immutable once uploaded. |
| Withdrawal | Taking an artifact out of use, with a reason. Permanent. |
| Word | Meaning |
|---|
| Version | A release of a project, numbered as the project chooses. Quasar itself uses YYYY.MM.N. |
| Version branch | The git branch where one version's work is integrated while it is built. |
| Release tag | A git tag on exactly what was deployed for a version. |
| Hotfix | An urgent fix to what is already installed. It does not change the version number. |
| Word | Meaning |
|---|
| Agent | An AI coding agent, or any program, working in Quasar through its API under a person's key. Its actions carry an Agent mark. |
| MCP | The Model Context Protocol, the way coding agents talk to tools such as Quasar. |
| API key | A credential starting with qsk_ that lets a program act as its owner. It can be read-only. |
| Service account | A non-human member with its own keys, for CI and integrations. |
| Work session | The span of one agent turn, timed by Quasar's clock. It becomes a work log only when a person confirms it. |
| Pre-analysis | The plan an agent records before starting an issue, with the files it examined. It goes stale if those files change. |
| Agent contract | The versioned rules Quasar gives an agent about how to work. |
| Step-up | A fresh second-factor check before a sensitive action. |
| Word | Meaning |
|---|
| Tenant | One organization's walled-off space in Quasar. Nothing in it is visible to any other. |
| Division, Team | Groupings of people and projects inside an organization, which can adjust access. |
| Operator | Whoever runs an installation of Quasar, from a console above the tenants. |
| Public publication | A published documentation release an organization has made readable by anyone, as pages, a REST API and an MCP server. |
| Product guide | Quasar's own documentation, served by every installation. This guide. |