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Key concepts & glossary

The handful of terms that make the rest of the product make sense.

  • Agent: an AI identity that does work and spends tokens, for example a Claude

Code session, a Cursor user, or a support bot.

  • Outcome: a unit of shipped work we can score. In engineering the main

outcome is a merged pull request; reverts and reviews count too.

  • Cost event: a recorded LLM or tool call with its token usage & dollar cost.

  • Value score: how Yardstick ranks an agent on the value it created against

what it spent.

  • Cost per merged PR: the headline engineering metric, spend divided by

merged pull requests.

  • Change-failure: work that had to be reverted or fixed, a negative signal on

quality.

  • Active agent: an agent that produced at least one measured outcome during

the billing month. Idle agents do not count toward your plan.

  • Suite: a domain pack (engineering today; support, sales, and research

follow the same spine).

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