Glossary

Many of Pangur's terms are ordinary words with a particular meaning, among them copy, project, reading and plan. Each entry below gives the meaning that the documentation uses on every page. Where the MCP tools or the API use a different word for the same thing, the entry says so.

ACopy Anchor Link

Activity: the list of background work you have started, such as imports, summaries, transcriptions and exports, with the state and outcome of each task. It covers every project in your account and is described in Background work and notifications.

Address: the part of a project's links that follows /p/. An address is made of lowercase letters, digits and hyphens. See Projects and libraries.

Allowance: a limit on how much of something your plan lets you use, such as Ask questions or storage. Daily guards on model use apply on every plan in addition to the plan's allowances; both are set out in Models, assistants and who pays.

Analysis: Pangur's structured reading of a primary source, record by record, into the people, places, works, events and relations it names. Each finding is backed by a quotation that Pangur checks against the text. See How analysis works.

Annotation: see highlight.

Arrangement: a tree of levels and nodes that you define in order to arrange sources your own way, alongside the built-in Library and Catalogue views. The API and the MCP tools call an arrangement a perspective. See Arrangements, source groups and vocabularies.

Ask: the place where you put questions to a project's library and receive answers written from its passages, with numbered citations. What happens behind an answer is explained in How Ask answers.

Assistant: an outside AI client, such as Claude, ChatGPT or a coding agent, connected to Pangur over MCP. An assistant can read your library and add to it, but it can never edit or delete anything. See Assistants and Pangur.

Assistant mark: a passage that an assistant has marked in one of your files. Marks are outlined and labelled with the assistant's name and kept apart from your own highlights, and for each one you decide whether to keep it as a highlight or dismiss it. See Highlights, notes and assistant marks.

Attachment: the library's word for a file stored on an item. The documentation says attachment where you deal with the file as a file (downloading or removing it) and surrogate where the subject is what the file shows. See Add files you already have.

Authority: a record of a named person, place, institution or repository that catalogue descriptions and analysis entities can link to. See Descriptions, authorities and linked records.

Awaiting upload: the state of a saved work for which Pangur found only a route through your institution rather than a free PDF. Pangur attaches a link ("Access via institution"), and you open it, download the PDF and add it yourself. See Where PDFs come from.

BCopy Anchor Link

Binder: the list of a draft's sections on the left of Write, used for moving around the draft. See Write a draft.

Block: one typed piece of content in an exhibition section, such as a passage of text, a quotation, an image or a map. The kinds are listed in Exhibition blocks.

Bulk import: one background job that saves many references at once, for example from a reference file or from a document's bibliography. Only one bulk import runs at a time in a project. See Import a reading list or reference file.

CCopy Anchor Link

Caller pays: the rule that Pangur never runs its own models for an assistant connected over MCP. The assistant's own model does the work, so the cost falls on whoever pays for the assistant rather than on your Pangur plan. See Models, assistants and who pays.

Candidate card: a card showing a work that a search or lookup has found but that is not yet saved to your library. Saving happens only from the card. See Find and add a work.

Capture: see photograph.

Catalogue: a project's archival hierarchy of repositories, collections, series and files, which holds manuscripts by shelfmark along with their folios. A manuscript can be in the catalogue whether or not it has a library item. See The catalogue.

Collection: a named group of items inside one library. Collections can be nested, an item can belong to several of them, and deleting a collection leaves its items in the library. See Work with items and collections.

Concept: something that a corpus's texts turn on. A concept is found by analysis, formed from groups of similar records, or suggested by you and then tested against the texts. See Explore a corpus.

Connections: the citation links among works that are already in your library, shown on an item's Study tab. Compare references, which are the works a PDF cites whether or not you hold them. See References and connections.

Connector: what you add in Claude or ChatGPT, using Pangur's connector URL, in order to reach Pangur's MCP server. See Connect Claude, ChatGPT or a coding agent.

Copy: a set of files that together show a resource, such as an afternoon's photographs of a manuscript or a library's digitisation of a book. Each file in a copy is a surrogate. The MCP tools and the API call a copy a surrogate set. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Corpus: a named set of sources that analysis reads and explores together. A corpus holds only its membership and its guidance, so deleting a corpus deletes no reading. See Work with corpora.

Corpus digest: a background reading of a whole corpus, written a few minutes after the corpus changes. Ask reads the digest first when it opens the corpus. The digest is charged to the project owner's model use. See Work with corpora.

Corrects: the relation in which one copy's images replace an earlier copy's images for the parts that both copies cover. Compare supplements. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Current draft: in transcription, the working text of a manuscript's transcription, which is saved automatically as you edit. Compare version. See Transcribe a manuscript.

DCopy Anchor Link

Daily guard: a limit on model use per person per day that applies on every plan. Model use today, full write-ups today and manuscript readings are all daily guards. See Plans, limits and usage.

Dating assertion: a scholar's recorded claim about a date, together with its evidence, certainty and reasoning. Assertions are kept in revisions within a corpus. See Dating.

Default project: the project you opened most recently on any device, which is marked Opened last. The iPhone and iPad app, the command line and assistants all work in the default project unless they are told otherwise. See Projects and libraries.

Description: catalogue information about a level, a manuscript or an image, recorded in a schema such as ISAD(G), Dublin Core or TEI msDesc. See Descriptions, authorities and linked records.

Desk: the panel on the right of Write, with the tabs Plan, Library, Research and Ask, where you consult your sources while writing. See Write a draft.

Device copy: the copy of a project's library that a browser or the iPhone and iPad app keeps so that you can read without a connection. See Working offline.

Diplomatic and expanded: the two readings Pangur keeps for each line of a transcription, one as the text is written and one with its abbreviations expanded. They are two readings of a single transcription rather than two transcriptions. See Transcribe a manuscript.

Document: see research document.

Draft: a piece of your own writing, laid out in sections in Plan and written in Write. A draft is personal to its author. See Drafts, sections and versions.

ECopy Anchor Link

Editor: a member of an organisation project who can change the library and the project's shared work. See Project members and roles.

Entity: a person, place, organisation, work, concept, event or object that analysis has found. An entity belongs to the whole project, which is why one person named in three sources is a single entity. See How analysis works.

ESTC: the English Short Title Catalogue of early printed books. Pangur searches it beside each general search and can import its records and collections. See Find and add a work.

Exhibition: a public web page built from your research, made of sections and blocks, which you edit as a draft and publish as a snapshot. Publishing is not offered on every account or deployment. See Make an exhibition.

Expand — full write-up: see full write-up.

FCopy Anchor Link

Facsimile: the page images of a manuscript or book, which Read and Transcribe show leaf by leaf. A facsimile may be a repository's IIIF manifest, your own photographs, or an attached PDF or image. See Link a digitised facsimile.

Find passages: the label of the home page's question tab when no model is switched on for Ask. It returns the matching passages without writing an answer. See How Ask answers.

Folio: a leaf of a catalogued manuscript, and the kind of part that a catalogued manuscript has. See The catalogue.

Full write-up: a long version of one Ask answer, written in the background by the long-form model when you choose Expand — full write-up. The long-form model is not switched on for every deployment. See Ask a question.

GCopy Anchor Link

Guest: someone from outside an organisation who is a member of one of its projects, as an editor or a viewer. See Project members and roles.

Guidance: what you tell analysis about a corpus's sources, such as the people and places that may occur in them and the range of dates. Guidance applies the next time a source is read. See Work with corpora.

HCopy Anchor Link

Handle: the name in your public address for exhibitions, which takes the form /{handle}/. See Publish, protect and take down an exhibition.

Highlight: a passage you have marked in a file, with a colour and, if you want them, a note, tags and topics. Highlights are kept with the item. See Highlights, notes and assistant marks.

ICopy Anchor Link

Import source: a zotero.org library that has been connected for a one-time, read-only import into a project. An import source is not itself a project. See Import from Zotero.

Index: Pangur's store of the text it has read from your files, which Ask, analysis and passage search all draw on. Building the index does not change your library. See How Pangur reads your sources.

Ingest: the process of adding files you already have. Pangur identifies each file and turns it into a reference with the file attached. See Add files you already have.

Institutional access: your EZproxy prefix and OpenURL resolver, set in Settings. Pangur uses them to give you a link through your institution to a paywalled work. See Where PDFs come from.

Item: the library's entry for a resource, with its details, files, notes and highlights. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

LCopy Anchor Link

Leaf: one image of a facsimile, numbered from the first ("Leaf 3 of 120"). A leaf is the image's position in the facsimile, so it is not necessarily the same as a folio. See Link a digitised facsimile.

Library: the items of one project, with their files, notes, highlights and collections. Each project has a library of its own. See Projects and libraries.

Library map: a short description of each work, written once by a model from the work's whole text. Ask reads the library map before every question. See How Pangur reads your sources.

Line detection: finding the lines of text on a manuscript leaf. A program on Pangur's server does this without a language model, so it has no daily limit. Compare transcribe with AI. See Reading pages with a model.

Linked records: explicit links between a library item and a catalogue level, a manuscript or an arrangement node. See Descriptions, authorities and linked records.

Live exhibition: a published exhibition. The Free plan keeps one exhibition live at a time. See Publish, protect and take down an exhibition.

MCopy Anchor Link

Manuscript: in the catalogue, a record identified by its shelfmark within a repository, with its folios and photographs. See The catalogue.

Mention: one occurrence of an entity in one record of a reading, with its role and the quotation that supports it. See Review a reading.

Method, purpose and role: how a copy was made (colour photography or raking light, for example), why it was made, and what one surrogate shows (a recto or a watermark, for example). All three come from vocabularies that you can edit. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Model use today: the daily guard on the tokens that Pangur's language models use on your behalf, counted per UTC day. See Models, assistants and who pays.

NCopy Anchor Link

Numbering system: a scheme such as foliation, pagination or quire signatures that gives a manuscript's folios their labels. See Numbering systems.

OCopy Anchor Link

Opened last: the label on your default project. See default project.

Organisation: a group that holds seats on the Institution plan, with admins and members. See Work in an organisation.

Organisation project: a project that belongs to an organisation and has members with roles. Organisation projects are not offered on every account or deployment. See Work in an organisation.

Outbox: the changes you made without a connection, which wait on the device until they can be sent ("One change made here is waiting to be sent."). See Working offline.

Output: see research document.

Owner: the person who can rename, scope and remove a project and, in an organisation project, manage its members. In a personal project, the only person is the owner. See Project members and roles.

PCopy Anchor Link

Part: a page, leaf, side or face of a resource. A catalogued manuscript's parts are its folios. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Personal project: a project that belongs to one person and has no members. See Projects and libraries.

Photograph: an image of a source that you upload or capture, which Pangur stores and prepares for zooming. The code and some messages call a photograph a capture. See Photograph a manuscript.

Plan (subscription): the tier your account is on, which is Free, Researcher or Institution. The plan sets your allowances. See Plans, limits and usage.

Plan (workspace): the place where you lay out a draft's argument as sections and collect the works that each section needs. See Plan an argument.

Primary source: a status in an item's references for an archival manuscript cited by repository and shelfmark. A primary source can never be imported, but it may have a facsimile. See References and connections.

Private link: a secret address that serves a project's or a collection's references as a BibTeX, BibLaTeX, RIS or CSL-JSON file. Anyone who has the link can read the references. See Cite and export references.

Project: a library and everything you make from it. See Projects and libraries.

Proposal: an offer from Ask to create something, such as a corpus or a collection, or to read a manuscript leaf. Nothing happens until you agree to it. See Ask a question.

RCopy Anchor Link

Reading (analysis): one analysis of one source, which has a state such as queued, ready, partial or failed. See How analysis works.

Reading copy: the copy that Read, Ask and transcription open by default, marked with a ribbon on its card. Every resource has exactly one reading copy. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Reading position: the place where you stopped in a file. It is kept for you per project and per version of the file, so that another device opens at the same place. See The reading room.

Reading room: a view that shows the text of one item, or of a sequence of items, as continuous reflowed text. See The reading room.

Reading rules: standing instructions that apply to every future model reading of one manuscript. See Transcribe a manuscript.

Record (library): a work's details as the library holds them, that is its title, creators, date, abstract and tags. Compare text. See How Pangur reads your sources.

Record (analysis): one division of a source, such as a letter, a charter, an entry or a sermon. A record is also called a unit. See How analysis works.

Recording: an audio or video item, which is played in the reader and transcribed on request. See Record audio and video.

References: the works a stored PDF cites, shown on an item's Study tab with each one's status: in library, importable, primary source or unresolved. Compare connections. See References and connections.

Repository: the institution that a shelfmark belongs to. Repositories sit at the root of the catalogue. See The catalogue.

Research: the place that lists a project's research documents. See Research outputs.

Research document: a stored piece of writing in a project, such as a saved Ask answer, a summary, a literature review or notes, kept together with its versions. The screens also call these documents outputs. See Research outputs.

Research tag: a tag of the form dimension: name (the dimensions include person, date, place and topic) on a highlight, an assistant mark, an analysis record or an Ask answer. Research tags are different from an item's tags. See Highlights, notes and assistant marks.

Resource: the thing the research is about, such as a book, an article or a manuscript. Every library item is a resource, and so is a catalogued manuscript that has no library item. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Retake: one surrogate that replaces one other surrogate of the same resource, such as a photograph taken again. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Review: a person's pass through an analysis reading to confirm, reject or correct what it found. See Review a reading.

Role (project): owner, editor or viewer, in an organisation project. See Project members and roles.

Role (surrogate): see method, purpose and role.

SCopy Anchor Link

Scope to collection: a project setting that limits assistants and the command line to one of the project's collections. See Projects and libraries.

Seat: a place in an organisation. Holding a seat gives you the Institution plan. See Work in an organisation.

Section: in a draft, one part of the outline, with a title, a synopsis, a status and its text. In an exhibition, one ordered chapter of the page. See Drafts, sections and versions and Make an exhibition.

Share: references that you have shared with named people by email, who read them live as viewers. A share is not the same as membership of a project. See Share references.

Shelfmark: a manuscript's identifier within its repository, also called its reference code. See The catalogue.

Snapshot: the frozen copy of an exhibition that its public page shows. Publishing makes a new snapshot, and the draft itself is never shown publicly. See Publish, protect and take down an exhibition.

Source flow: a set of browser steps that Pangur for Mac runs in order to sign in to a publisher or download a book through your institution. See Download through your institution.

Source group: a named, ordered group of works, manuscripts, pages or photographs that can be placed in arrangements. See Arrangements, source groups and vocabularies.

Source inventory: a fixed description of a corpus's sources and readings that can be staged, activated and rolled back. Inventories are used mainly by assistants and the command line. See Source inventories and assistant-submitted analysis.

Summary: a document that a model writes from the whole text of one work, filed under the work's Outputs. See Ask a question.

Supplements: the relation in which one copy adds a second view of an earlier copy's parts and replaces nothing. Compare corrects. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Surrogate: one file that stands for a resource or for one of its parts. A surrogate may be a photograph, a stored file, or a canvas of a repository's IIIF manifest. See Resources, copies and surrogates.

Surrogate set: the name that the MCP tools and the API use for a copy. See copy.

TCopy Anchor Link

Tag: a word or phrase attached to an item in the library and used for filtering. Compare research tag and topic. See Work with items and collections.

Task: one piece of background work that you started, listed in Activity. See Background work and notifications.

TEI text: an imported TEI edition of an ESTC book, kept in revisions and linked to page images. See TEI texts and transcription exports.

Text (of an item): the one text that Pangur reads for an item. It is chosen from an arrangement's texts, an imported edition, a transcription or a file's extracted text. See How Pangur reads your sources.

Topic: a theme that you declare by name. Your highlights gather under it by similarity of meaning, with no model call. See Highlights, notes and assistant marks.

Transcribe with AI: a two-pass reading of a manuscript leaf's lines by a vision model, which counts against your daily manuscript transcriptions. See Reading pages with a model.

Transcript: the text of a recording's speech, made by a speech model on request. You can correct a transcript. See Record audio and video.

Transcription: a line-by-line text of a facsimile's leaves, linked to the images. When it is saved, the transcription becomes the item's text. See Transcribe a manuscript.

UCopy Anchor Link

Unit: see record (analysis).

Usage page: the page that shows how much of each plan limit and daily guard you have used and when each one resets. See Plans, limits and usage.

VCopy Anchor Link

Version: a saved copy that cannot be changed. A draft's version is a snapshot of its sections, and a transcription's version is a named copy of its pages and text. See Drafts, sections and versions and Transcribe a manuscript.

Viewer: a member of an organisation project who can read, ask and export but cannot change the project. See Project members and roles.

Vocabulary: a project's named list of terms, used by arrangement fields and by the method, purpose and role of copies. See Arrangements, source groups and vocabularies.

WCopy Anchor Link

Waitlist: the way new accounts are admitted on deployments where sign-up is not open. You join the waitlist, and Pangur emails you when your place is ready. See Get started.

Write: the place where you write one draft's prose, section by section, with the desk beside it. See Write a draft.