Glossary
An A–Z of the domain terms used throughout this book. Each entry gives a short definition and a link to the chapter that covers the concept in depth. For the canonical actors and core objects (Customer, Provider, Business, Service, Product, Community, Credential, Reputation), the authoritative reference is Terminology & Conventions.
A
Ad — A Happening type a business uses to raise broad awareness of its brand or storefront rather than promote a single dated event; it advertises the business, not a venue, and posting one requires a business you own. See Happenings.
Admin — An internal operator of the Fyndow platform who verifies credentials, resolves disputes, moderates forums, and manages platform settings. Admin accounts are provisioned internally, never through public sign-up. See Roles & The Permission Model.
AI Assistant — The per-provider conversational agent that is the primary interface for running a business: providers tell it what they want in natural language and it carries the action out through the same APIs the UI uses. See The AI Assistant.
Application fee — The portion of an on-platform payment that Fyndow keeps, computed as a percentage of the payment amount and applied as the platform's fee on each charge. See Payments & Payout Timing.
Audit log — The complete, append-only record of every AI tool call (and of moderation actions), capturing user, tool name, arguments, result, and timing. See The AI Assistant.
Auto-execute action — A read-only AI tool (one that lists, fetches, searches, or checks) that runs immediately and returns real data, as opposed to a confirmation-gated write. See The AI Assistant.
Availability — A business's configured working hours and bookable slots, recorded as hours in the business's timezone and used to validate bookings against real, timezone-aware open times. See The Business Toolkit.
B
Back Office — The traditional pages-and-forms provider interface that exists as a visual fallback to the AI assistant. See What Fyndow Is.
Badge tiers — The three trust layers a customer reads at a glance: Verified business, Licensed, and Community Endorsed. See Trust & Reputation.
Booking — A scheduled service appointment a customer makes against a provider's real availability; the unit that drives quotes, invoices, and reviews. See End-to-End Journeys.
Business — A provider's storefront and operating unit: the entity that owns services, products, a business page, availability, and reputation. One provider account can own many businesses. See Roles & The Permission Model.
Byline — The name and avatar attached to a Happening: a person's own name when they post an event as themselves, or a business's name and logo when the post advertises that business. See Happenings.
C
Channel integration — A notification-only external surface (WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, email) over which Fyndow can message users; no business action is ever executed through an external channel. See Channel Integrations.
Comment — On a forum post, a threaded reply nestable up to five levels deep; on a Happening, a lighter one-level-deep thread (top-level comments plus single replies). See Communities & Forums and Happenings.
Community — The user-facing term for a topic- or business-centered space where people post, discuss, and subscribe; implemented by the forums system. See Communities & Forums.
Community-filtered discovery — Marketplace search narrowed to providers who are verified members of a gated community the customer also belongs to — Fyndow's core trust differentiator. See The Marketplace.
Community Endorsed — The third trust badge tier, indicating peers and gated communities who have actually worked with a business vouch for it, derived from earned endorsement counts and community standing. See Trust & Reputation.
Community reach — The free, members-only audience for a Happening: posted to a community, visible only to its approved members, self-moderated, and live immediately with no payment or review. See Happenings.
Compose — One of the two Happening display modes: instead of uploading a finished poster, the creator supplies an image plus typed details (a description, and for an event the date, time, and place) and Fyndow lays them into a clean, consistent card. See Happenings.
Composite reputation score — A single weighted 0–5 score combining six signals (review average, completion rate, response time, credential level, community activity, community attestation). See Trust & Reputation.
Confirmation-gated — The property of an AI write tool: calling it changes no data; it only prepares an action that a human must explicitly confirm before the real write happens. See The AI Assistant.
Credential — A verifiable claim about a provider (license, insurance, certification, registration) submitted for verification and surfaced as a trust badge; one or more verified credentials earn the Licensed badge. See Trust & Reputation.
Customer — A person who discovers, books, and pays for services or buys products on Fyndow — the demand side of the marketplace. See Who It Is For.
D
Destination charge — The Stripe Connect pattern Fyndow uses: the customer pays the platform account and funds settle into the provider's connected account, minus the application fee. See Payments & Payout Timing.
Digest — A batched, personalized summary delivered on a schedule (drawn from sources like subscribed-community activity), as opposed to a real-time notification. See Notifications & Digests.
Dispute — A customer-raised claim that something went wrong with a paid transaction, resolved through an admin-mediated lifecycle. See Disputes & Chargebacks.
E
Embedding — Dropping a hosted Fyndow "Book Now" or checkout widget onto a provider's own website, talking to the same first-party endpoints the Fyndow apps use. See Embedding & Partner Integrations.
Endorsement — A community-attestation signal: a user vouches for a business, but only after a completed booking or order, once per business, never their own. See Trust & Reputation.
Escrow-lite — Fyndow's protection model using a payout delay rather than true escrow: funds settle to the provider's balance immediately but the bank payout is held for a configurable window during which refunds can claw back. See Payments & Payout Timing.
Event (Happening) — A Happening type for a real-world gathering — a market, class, meetup, fundraiser, launch, or open day — anchored to a start, an end, and a location. Anyone signed in can post one as themselves. See Happenings.
Event catalog — The set of typed event names the webhook surface can deliver, sourced from the platform's notification system. See Webhooks & The Event Catalog.
F
Flyer — One of the two Happening display modes: the creator uploads a single finished poster image that is the post, adding only a short caption — even an event flyer skips retyping its location because the image already shows it. See Happenings.
Follow-up — An automated provider reminder (payment, review, re-engagement, or credential reminder) that keeps loops such as the review request warm. See The Business Toolkit.
Forum — The underlying system that implements Communities (Reddit-style open plus gated communities, with categories, moderation, and subscriptions). See Communities & Forums.
G
Gated community — A membership-verified forum created by an organization where entry requires approval, so membership itself becomes a trust signal that filters marketplace search. See Communities & Forums.
GMV — Gross merchandise value: the on-platform transaction volume (bookings, orders, paid invoices) the platform fee is taken from. See The Revenue Menu.
H
Happening — A time-boxed post — an event, a promotion, or an ad — that surfaces while it's relevant and auto-expires when its run-window closes. Anyone signed in can post an event as themselves; promotions and ads attach to a business you own. See Happenings.
Headless-first — Fyndow's architectural thesis: it is an API that happens to have apps, not an app that happens to have an API; every capability lives behind one API contract and is consumed through one typed client. See The Headless-First Thesis.
I
Invoice — A request for payment issued by a provider for completed or quoted work, payable on-platform. See Quote → Invoice → Payment.
L
The Leak — The structural flaw of any in-person marketplace: once it has introduced two parties, they can settle off-platform (cash, e-transfer) and the platform earns nothing. It is the strategic problem Fyndow's monetization and trust design exists to counter. See The Leak.
Licensed — The second trust badge tier, indicating that at least one of a provider's credentials (a license, insurance certificate, certification, or registration) has been verified; each verified credential is shown with its name and issuing authority. See Trust & Reputation.
M
Manual (off-platform) payment — A payment a provider records as received outside the platform's payment rail (cash, cheque, e-transfer); it yields no platform fee and is the concrete form the leak takes. See Payments & Payout Timing.
Marketplace — The half of Fyndow where money changes hands: business storefronts, structured search, and the Book/Order action. See The Marketplace.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) — An open standard letting any MCP-capable AI agent operate Fyndow on its user's behalf by calling Fyndow's tool registry; a forward-looking platform surface built on the assistant's existing tools. See MCP — Fyndow as an Agent Capability.
Moderation — The toolset (flag, remove, lock, pin, ban, audit log) that keeps forum content healthy, scaling from admin-only in open forums to owner-moderated in gated communities. See Communities & Forums.
Multi-business ownership — The structural rule that one provider account can own any number of businesses, each a fully independent unit. See Roles & The Permission Model.
Mutual review — A bidirectional rating anchored to a verified transaction: the customer rates the provider and the provider can rate the customer back. See Trust & Reputation.
N
Notification — A real-time, per-event message delivered in-app and via push according to each user's per-event-type channel preferences. See Notifications & Digests.
O
Open forum — A Reddit-style community anyone can read and any authenticated user can post in, with automatic subscription. See Communities & Forums.
Order — A marketplace purchase of a product, moving through the cart → checkout → fulfillment state machine. See State Machines.
Organization — An account type that runs gated communities and publishes to subscribers but does not get the business toolkit and never sells. See Roles & The Permission Model.
P
Payout delay — The configurable window by which a provider's bank payout is held after funds settle, the mechanism behind escrow-lite. See Payments & Payout Timing.
Pending AI action — A prepared-but-not-executed write, stored server-side with a short time-to-live; the real write runs only when the user confirms it by its id, so the payload cannot be tampered with. See The AI Assistant.
Platform fee — Fyndow's take rate on on-platform payments, never hardcoded: a configurable default with an admin-only per-business override. See Payments & Payout Timing.
Post — A thread inside a forum (title, content, optional images), votable and able to be pinned or locked. See Communities & Forums.
Product — A sellable good of a business, purchased via the marketplace cart → checkout → order flow rather than scheduled. See Terminology & Conventions.
Promotion — A Happening type a business uses to advertise one of its own offerings — a sale, a service special, a limited deal. It advertises the business rather than a venue, so it carries no location, and posting one requires a business you own. See Happenings.
Provider — A person or business that offers services or products, takes bookings, sends quotes and invoices, gets paid, and builds reputation — the supply side. See Who It Is For.
Public API — The forward-looking developer surface that exposes Fyndow's first-party API contract to third parties, gated by API-key/OAuth auth, scopes, rate limits, and tenant isolation. See The Public API.
Public reach — The paid, everyone-can-see audience for a Happening: posted to the public feed, geo-aware so nearby people see it, charged a flat per-post price, and reviewed by Fyndow as a quality gate before it goes live. See Happenings and Paying for Reach.
Q
Quote — A provider's priced proposal (line items) a customer can accept or decline, convertible into an invoice. See Quote → Invoice → Payment.
R
Reach — The audience a Happening is posted to — community or public — and the line where free posting meets paid distribution. You pay for reach, not for the right to post. See Paying for Reach.
Reaction — A one-tap emoji response (like, love, fire, clap, wow) a viewer leaves on a Happening; each person has one reaction at a time, switchable or removable, with a running count shown on the card. See Happenings.
Refund — A reversal of an on-platform payment governed by Fyndow's cancellation framework; because charges are destination charges, refunds pull back the provider's share and the fee proportionally. See Refund & Cancellation Framework.
Reputation — The weighted composite score summarizing how trustworthy and well-rated a provider is; it feeds search ranking. See Trust & Reputation.
Review — A rating left after a completed, paid interaction; the raw material of reputation. See Trust & Reputation.
Role — One of the four account types (Customer, Provider, Organization, Admin) that gates every meaningful action, stored on the session for lookup-free checks. See Roles & The Permission Model.
Run-window — A Happening's start-to-end lifespan; when it closes the Happening auto-expires and drops out of the feeds, which is what keeps the feed current rather than an archive of stale flyers. See Happenings.
S
Search ranking — The structured, non-algorithmic ordering of marketplace results by proximity, availability, credentials, and reputation (with a verified boost), filterable by community membership. See The Marketplace.
Service — A bookable offering of a business — work done at a scheduled time — that drives bookings, quotes, and invoices. See Terminology & Conventions.
State machine — The explicit lifecycle a booking or order follows, with defined statuses and allowed transitions. See State Machines.
Storefront — A business's public page: identity, verified credentials, services, products, portfolio, reviews, and the primary Book/Order action. See The Marketplace.
Stripe Connect — The payments rail Fyndow runs on, using destination charges into providers' connected accounts. See Payments & Payout Timing.
Subscription — A user following a forum, with a per-forum notification level (all / popular / mentions-only / none) that also feeds the digest. See Communities & Forums.
T
Tool — A named, typed function the AI assistant can call; read tools run immediately, write tools are confirmation-gated. See The AI Assistant.
Transaction ledger — The immutable record to which every movement of money writes an entry, backing the provider wallet. See The Business Toolkit.
Trust badge — The visible mark a verified credential (or verified identity, or community standing) earns on a storefront, surfaced as one of the three badge tiers. See Trust & Reputation.
V
Verified business — The first trust badge tier, indicating a business's identity is real and tied to a name (via verified payment identity, a passed platform review, or an approved proof document). See Trust & Reputation.
Vendor-agnostic AI layer — The provider-agnostic framework the AI assistant is built on, letting the underlying model be swapped by configuration without changing the tool layer. See The AI Assistant.
W
Wallet — A provider's earnings store with available and pending balances, fed by the transaction ledger. See The Business Toolkit.
Webhook — An outbound, signed, retried delivery that tells an external system the moment a Fyndow event happens, turning the platform's notification fan-out into a public subscription surface. See Webhooks & The Event Catalog.