PARA

Glossary

# Shared vocabulary

PARA uses internal vocabulary that carries product meaning. This page is the canonical reference for those terms so the other docs can stay shorter and more consistent.

Core terms

Political and product vocabulary

Second layer
PARA’s model for adding political context, validation, and civic workflows without requiring every conversation to begin inside PARA.
RAQ
Rightfully Asked Questions. A route family for assessment, results, proposals, open questions, and ideological self-location.
Cabildeo
A structured lobbying and deliberation flow with proposals, positions, delegations, voting phases, and community context.
Matter
An issue, controversy, or agenda item that concentrates attention. Matters are distinct from policy proposals.
Policy
A more explicit proposal surface where direction and strength of support can be measured rather than implied.
Flair
A structured civic label carried by PARA posts and metadata so political speech is easier to classify and compare.
Quadratic voting
The intensity layer on top of the `-3` to `+3` policy scale. The docs use the term for strength-aware civic input, not a generic “like” count.
Civic intelligence
The combination of clustering, classification, embeddings, agents, trend reading, and assisted reasoning built on top of civic data.

Route terms

Operational route families

  • Base / My Base: orientation surfaces for civic activity, identity, and participation summaries.
  • Highlights: a separate reading layer for annotations, not just bookmarks.
  • Representatives: a civic route family for political actors and comparison, distinct from generic profiles.
  • Community profile: the route where a belief cluster, community identity, and governance overlays come together.
  • Agent chat: conversation with a community or premium agent; still earlier and less stable than the regular inbox model.

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