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Terms

These are the definitions for common terms used in Tempest’s product and documentation. In general, our goal is to use terms that are familiar to most developers. If you have any suggestions for other terms to include, please contact us.

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App

First-party integrations with third-party providers that enable data import, catalog hydration, service health monitoring, and project orchestration automation.

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Catalog

A centralized collection of published recipes created by platform admins, available to developers for project creation under the “Projects” section.

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Cryptographic Asset

Digital assets used for security operations, including SSL/TLS certificates, RSA keys, and AES keys, enabling secure encryption, decryption, signing, and verification.

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Dedicated Environment

Stable, long-lived environment instances suitable for sandbox, QA, or production use cases.

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Developer Platform

A self-service platform enabling users to deploy infrastructure and applications independently.

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Environment

Isolated instances of recipe resources with separate variables, credentials, and resources. Available as dedicated or preview environments.

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Environment Variable

Key-value pairs for non-sensitive application or system configuration that may vary between environments.

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Global Setup

A recipe section for resources shared across multiple environments, such as Git repositories, DNS zones, and cloud configurations.

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Import Policy

Rules defining how existing resources are imported into Tempest, maintaining synchronization with third-party providers for centralized management.

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Orchestration

Automated project deployment system that manages resource delivery from start to finish, operating on secure defaults while maintaining transparency.

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Organization

Top-level entity encompassing teams, people, credentials, and policies, with strict isolation between different organizations.

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Preview Environment

Ephemeral environments automatically created and destroyed based on triggers like PR events, branch changes, or tag creation.

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Project

A logical container for resources, owners, and documentation that forms a single service. Created automatically during recipe deployment.

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Recipe

A blueprint defining the steps and resources needed to deploy infrastructure or applications, ensuring compliance with operational, security, and business standards.

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Resource

Real-world infrastructure components managed within Tempest, such as GitHub repositories, cloud storage, or DNS records.

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Secret

Sensitive information for authentication and secure communication, including API keys, database credentials, and private keys.

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Self-service

A process enabling users to deploy resources independently without manual requests or ticket-driven workflows, supported by platforms with built-in controls and safety measures.

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Team

The primary ownership unit in Tempest, managing recipes, projects, resources, and apps. Enables resource sharing across teams or isolation as needed.

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User-defined Variable

Configurable values in recipes that users customize during deployment, allowing recipe personalization while maintaining standardization.