---
title: Glossary
description: Key terms used in Tanso products and documentation
last_updated: 2026-08-06
---

# Glossary

## Cost Attribution
Linking AI compute costs (LLM API calls, GPU time) to the specific customer and feature that triggered them.

## Cost Alert
A notification triggered when a customer's margin drops below a configured threshold.

## Credit Weight
A server-side, effective-dated tariff entry defining how many credits one usage unit burns, per feature and optionally per model. Resolved most-specific first at the event's timestamp; the default is 1:1.

## Credit Price Book
The effective-dated price of one credit per denomination (price plus ISO currency). The second pricing control alongside credit weights. Weights set credits per action, the price book sets money per credit. Purchased credit grants are stamped with the book price at sale time.

## Customer Reference ID
Your system's unique identifier for a customer, used to link Tanso data to your user records.

## Dimension
A key/value pair that scopes entitlement rules and usage counters within a customer. Customer = org (billing entity); dimensions slice usage within that org (e.g., per API key, per user, per project). Rules without a dimension apply globally to the customer.

## Entitlement
A runtime access check. Before executing a request, the system verifies the customer's plan grants access to the requested feature. Denied requests never hit compute.

## Entitlement Alert
An alert triggered by entitlement consumption. Two types: `entitlement_usage_percent` (fires when usage exceeds a % threshold) and `entitlement_remaining` (fires when remaining units drop below a threshold). Requires a feature_key.

## Feature Key
A unique string identifier for a billable capability (e.g., `ai-summarization`, `pdf-generation`). Used in entitlement checks and usage events.

## Gross Margin
(Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) / Revenue. In AI SaaS, COGS is dominated by model inference costs.

## MCP (Model Context Protocol)
An open protocol for connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources. Tanso exposes billing and pricing tools via MCP servers.

## Metering
Counting usage events (API calls, tokens, compute time) for billing and analytics.

## Usage Event
A recorded instance of a customer using a feature. Contains: customer ID, feature key, timestamp, and optional properties (model, tokens, cost).

## Usage-Based Pricing
Charging customers based on consumption rather than flat subscription fees. Common models: per-API-call, per-token, per-seat.

More for agents: https://tansohq.com/llms.txt