Glossary

One term, one meaning. All Zodiac documentation uses these terms.

Allowance — a quota that permissions can consume. An allowance has a balance and can refill on a schedule. See Allowances.

Annotation — an offchain note that groups the permissions of a role and points to their source. The Zodiac App uses annotations to show readable permission summaries.

Avatar — the account that holds the assets and executes the transactions. In almost all setups, the avatar is a Safe.

Clearance — the access level of a role for one target address: None, Target (all functions), or Function (listed functions only).

Condition — a check that a permission applies to a call. Conditions form a tree over the function parameters. See Conditions.

Constellation — a declarative TypeScript description of an organization’s accounts: Safes, Roles Modifiers, and users. The Zodiac SDK compares it with the onchain state and applies the difference. See Constellations.

Cooldown — the time in seconds that a transaction must wait in the Delay Modifier queue before execution.

DeFi Kit — a library of tested permission sets for common DeFi protocols, made by karpatkey. Package name: defi-kit.

Delegate call — an execution mode in which the target code runs in the context of the caller account. A delegate call from a Safe can change all storage of the Safe.

Execution options — the flags of a permission that allow Ether transfer (send), delegate calls (delegatecall), both, or none.

Expiration — the time window in seconds in which a queued Delay transaction stays valid after the cooldown. Zero means no expiration.

Guard — a contract that checks every transaction of an avatar or module before and after execution. A guard cannot start transactions.

Mastercopy — the audited implementation contract that all proxies of a Zodiac tool point to. Each version has one canonical address on all supported chains.

Member — an address that has a role. A member sends transactions through the Roles Modifier.

Modifier — a contract between a module (or an address) and the avatar. It applies a rule and forwards the transactions that pass.

Module — a contract that the avatar has enabled. A module can tell the avatar to execute transactions without owner signatures.

Module Proxy Factory — the factory contract that deploys module instances as minimal proxies (EIP-1167) and initializes them in one transaction.

Owner — an address that signs for the Safe. Also: the admin address of a modifier, which can change its configuration. The page text always tells you which meaning applies.

Permission — the right to call one function or one target, with optional conditions and execution options.

Proxy — the minimal contract that holds the state of one module instance and runs the code of the mastercopy.

Role — a named set of permissions with members, stored in a Roles Modifier.

Role key — the bytes32 identifier of a role. The SDK encodes a label of up to 32 characters (a-z, 0-9, _) into the key.

Safe — the smart account standard from Safe (previously Gnosis Safe). Zodiac tools attach to Safe accounts.

Scope (verb) — to limit a target or a function with conditions. “Scope a function” means: allow the function only when its conditions pass.

Subgraph — the indexed database of all Roles Modifier configurations. Endpoint: https://gnosisguild.squids.live/roles:production/api/graphql.

Target — two meanings. (1) In a permission: a contract address that a role can call. (2) In a module or modifier: the address that receives its execution calls. The page text always tells you which meaning applies.

Transaction unwrapper — an adapter contract that splits a batch transaction (for example MultiSend) so that the Roles Modifier checks each inner call on its own.

Wildcard — a permission without conditions. A wildcarded target accepts all calls; a wildcarded function accepts all parameter values.

Zodiac — the hosted platform at app.zodiac.eco  with workspaces, policies, and the API that the Zodiac SDK uses.

Zodiac Pilot — the browser extension that records, simulates, and executes transactions through a role. See pilot.gnosisguild.org .