ADAPT. The five beats of the loop: Agenda, Decide, Act, Perceive, Track. The name is also the discipline: run the beats well over many cycles and you adapt.
Actor. A person or group capable of decisions. The unit of analysis in the framework.
Adverse alternative (AA). The outcome that obtains if the preferred position fails: the fallback. Scored on benefit, cost, and utility.
Agenda. The actor's long-running, often unspoken ambition. The most stable layer of the planning funnel, and the A that opens the loop.
Benefit. Value an actor gains in a given scenario. The B in B(PP) and B(AA).
Capability gate. The check that asks whether the actor has enough resources to act. Returns Yes or No; No routes to rescope or rebuild. Part of the Decide beat.
Components. The constituent parts of an action: the things the action actually consists of.
Cost. Value an actor spends in a given scenario. The C in C(PP) and C(AA).
Goal. The specific measurable result that satisfies an objective.
Interest. What the actor cares about at the moment; produced by the agenda and updated by observation.
Learning loop. The feedback path from observation back to interest; what reshapes the actor's interests for the next cycle. Half of the Track beat.
Objective. A concrete aim derived from an interest.
Observation. What the actor notices about how the action played out. Source of the learning loop.
Options. The available moves the actor can score in the decision matrix.
Outcome. The settled result of a cycle.
Perception gap. The distance between actual utility and perceived utility. The framework's most important quiet variable; the heart of the Perceive beat.
Perceived utility. What the actor believes they got, filtered through bias and prior expectation.
Preferred position (PP). The outcome the actor is pushing toward: what success looks like. Scored on benefit, cost, and utility.
Rescope. Shrink the objective until it fits available resources. One of two legitimate routes from a No at the capability gate.
Resources. Spendable capital: money, time, attention, relationships, credibility, information.
Resource loop. The feedback path from outcome back to resources; what updates the actor's capital for the next cycle. Half of the Track beat.
Selection. The single option committed to after running the matrix.
Target. The thing or person the actor must move to reach the goal.
Three utilities. Expected (the matrix prediction), Actual (the real value reality delivered), and Perceived (what the actor believes they got).
Utility. Net value in a scenario: Benefit minus Cost. The U in U(PP) and U(AA).