Glossary
Key terms and definitions for APEX.
Naming Conventions
Section titled “Naming Conventions”| Concept | Canonical term | Do not use |
|---|---|---|
| APEX expansion | Agentic Platform Engineering eXperience for Azure | alternative expansions, reworded acronym definitions |
| The event | MicroHack or microhack | hackathon, workshop (except in general descriptions) |
| Event organizer | Facilitator | coach, instructor, proctor |
| Event participant | Participant | attendee, student, user (in workshop context) |
| Challenge tasks | Challenge 1, Challenge 2, etc. | Task, Exercise, Lab |
| The surprise DR requirement | Curveball (Challenge 4) | twist, surprise, pivot |
| The fictional company | Nordic Fresh Foods | NFF, the customer (reserve “customer” for the C8 role) |
| The platform being built | FreshConnect | the app, the project (when referring to the scenario) |
| Azure deployment language | Bicep or Terraform | ARM templates (unless comparing) |
| AI assistant | GitHub Copilot | Copilot (alone is acceptable), AI, the agent (when referring to the product) |
| Specific AI persona | Agent (e.g., 02-Requirements) | bot, assistant |
| Scoring document | Scoring rubric | rubric, scorecard |
| Working repository | APEX Accelerator (apex-accelerator) | starter repo, base repo |
| This documentation repo | Docs repo (apex-microhack) | main repo, source repo |
| Team subscription model | One subscription per team | shared subscription (prohibited) |
| MCP server access | Accelerator MCP configuration | retired fixed server lists or one policy setting presented as universal |
| Post-event resource deletion | Cleanup | teardown, decommission |
Azure Product Names
Section titled “Azure Product Names”Use the full product name on first reference, then the short form:
| Full name | Acceptable short form |
|---|---|
| Azure App Service | App Service |
| Azure SQL Database | SQL Database |
| Azure Blob Storage | Blob Storage, Storage Account |
| Azure Key Vault | Key Vault |
| Azure Policy | Policy |
| Azure Monitor / Application Insights | App Insights |
| Azure Resource Manager | ARM |
| GitHub Copilot Enterprise | Copilot Enterprise |
| Azure Well-Architected Framework | WAF |
A · B · C · D · F · G · H · I · L · M · P · S · V · W
ADR — Architecture Decision Record. A structured document capturing a
design decision, its context, and consequences. Generated with the apex-azure-adr skill.
Admin — A Leaderboard App role (admin in SWA). Admins can review and
validate team submissions, manually override published scores, assign awards,
manage teams, and upload JSON score files. Compare with Member.
Agent — A specialized AI assistant with a defined role, model, and set of
tools. Agents are defined in .github/agents/*.agent.md.
Approval Gate — A mandatory pause where the human reviews the current artifact, findings, and proposed next scope before selecting the next main agent or authorizing deployment.
AVM — Azure Verified Modules. Microsoft’s official library of pre-tested
Bicep modules published to mcr.microsoft.com/bicep.
Bicep — Azure’s domain-specific language for deploying Azure resources
declaratively. Files use the .bicep extension.
Challenge — A time-boxed task in the microhack aligned to one or more workflow steps. There are 8 challenges progressing from requirements through deployment, documentation, diagnostics, and a final showcase.
Conductor — Historical persona label for 01-Orchestrator. Current guidance uses Orchestrator and does not imply autonomous execution of other main agents.
Context Optimizer — 11-Context Optimizer, a reference capability that audits Copilot context use and recommends improvements. It does not edit agents or own a participant challenge-path handoff.
Conventional Commits — A commit message format (type: description) used
for automated versioning. Enforced by commitlint and lefthook.
Curveball — A surprise requirement change announced mid-microhack (Challenge 4). Simulates real-world scope changes by introducing multi-region disaster recovery requirements.
Dev Container — A Docker-based development environment defined in
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json. Provides consistent tooling for all contributors.
Facilitator — The event organizer who runs the microhack: manages the schedule, announces the curveball, coaches teams, and runs the scoring scripts.
FreshConnect — The project codename for the Nordic Fresh Foods delivery
platform used as the microhack scenario. All agent output goes to
agent-output/freshconnect/.
Governance Constraints — Azure Policy assignments that restrict resource
configurations. Discovered during Governance Step 3.5 and saved to
04-governance-constraints.md.
Handoff — A proposal that tells the human which main agent should own the next step, what evidence it needs, and what scope it will receive. The human selects and approves the target agent.
Instruction File — A .instructions.md file in .github/instructions/ that
provides file-type-specific coding standards to Copilot.
Leaderboard App — An optional browser-based HackerBoard web application built on Azure Static Web Apps. Some workshop packages use it for score submission and review, but it is not included in this repository.
MCP — Model Context Protocol. The participant workflow uses the GitHub and Azure servers declared in the current Accelerator .vscode/mcp.json. This docs repo also configures an Astro Docs MCP server for website maintenance.
Member — A Leaderboard App role (member in SWA). Members can view the
leaderboard, see their own team’s score breakdown, register their attendee
profile, and submit scores for their own team. Compare with Admin.
Persona — A historical display name or icon associated with an agent. Use the exact agent identifier, such as 02-Requirements, for workflow instructions.
Platform Engineering — The discipline of designing and building standardized, self-service toolchains and workflows that enable infrastructure delivery at scale. In this MicroHack, teams apply platform engineering practices — IaC templates, governance policies, and Well-Architected patterns — accelerated by GitHub Copilot.
Scoring — WAF-aligned evaluation of microhack submissions. Base score is 105 points across eight scored categories plus up to 25 bonus points for advanced features like zone redundancy and private endpoints.
Skill — Reusable instructions under .github/skills/*/SKILL.md. Invocation flags determine whether a skill can load automatically or requires explicit invocation.
Submission — A score payload submitted by a team member through the
Leaderboard App. Submissions enter a Pending state and must be approved
by an admin before they affect the published leaderboard.
Subagent — A bounded helper used by an owning agent for a permitted task such as validation or preview. Main agents such as 10-Challenger are human-selected and are not helper agents.
Validation — In the Leaderboard App context, the admin review step where
a pending submission is approved or rejected before scores are published.
In the infrastructure context, the az deployment group validate or
bicep build step that checks template correctness.
WAF — Well-Architected Framework. Microsoft’s design framework with five pillars: Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Operational Excellence.
What-if — An Azure deployment preview that shows what resources would be
created, modified, or deleted without making changes.
Participants receive this evidence from the selected Deploy agent; facilitators
may run az deployment group what-if as a diagnostic.