Concepts

The API speaks the shop's language. These are the terms it uses, in the order you meet them.

What gets planned

Term	Meaning
Linear	Cutting parts to length from stock measured along its length: bars, pipe, tube, extrusion, lumber.
Sheet	Cutting rectangular parts from sheets, with a panel saw's edge-to-edge cuts or a router's free placement.
Nest	Fitting irregular parts onto sheets, holes, rotations and spacing included.
Load	Fitting cargo into cartons, pallets and vehicles, with stacking rules and weight limits.

Cutting

Term	Meaning
Stock	The raw material: lengths of bar, or sheets with a width and height. A blank quantity means "as many as needed".
Part	A piece to produce, with its size, quantity and label, and sometimes a material, a finish or a rush flag.
Kerf	The width the saw removes at every cut. Lost material, counted in the plan.
Blocked zone	A span of linear stock to keep parts off: a defect, a bad end, an edge trim.
Drop	A leftover long enough to be worth keeping, at or over the stock's minimum_drop. Shown as kind: "drop".
Scrap	A leftover too short to keep. Shown as kind: "scrap".
Target	What the plan aims for: fewest bars or sheets, least waste, the most reusable drop, or the lowest cost.
Strict	Whether a part that cannot be placed fails the request, or is listed under unplaced.

Plans and jobs

Term	Meaning
Cut list	What you send: the parts, the stock and the settings. The request body of a linear or sheet call.
Plan	The cutting plan, what comes back: the layouts, the figures and what did not fit. Linear and sheet plans come back in the solve call; nest and load plans are read by id.
Layout	The placement of parts on one bar or sheet, or of cargo in one space.
Job	A nest or load that runs in the background. It is queued, running, done or failed, and when done points at its plan.
Export	A file made from a finished plan: DXF, SVG, labels, the shop packet.

Accounts and limits

Term	Meaning
Workspace	Where plans, keys and inventory live. A key acts in one workspace.
Tier	The workspace's access level: Free, or the Bench, Shop or Works plan. It sets the caps, budgets and features. A refusal's upgrade names the lowest tier that takes the request.
Budget	How many calls a minute: solves and job starts on one budget, free calls on another, and a cap per IP address.
Pool	A paid tier's monthly full-speed search time, drawn on by nests and loads.
Monthly loads	The loads a Free workspace may start each calendar month (UTC): 5, each at full speed. A failed load does not count. Paid plans have no monthly load cap.
Lane	Where a search runs: full_speed within the pool, slower past it, or deep past it when a job on the Works plan asks for it.
Free call	A call that does no solving and counts only against the free-call budget: checks, status, plans, exports, usage, the saved parts and spaces lists, and MCP's initialize and tools/list. An MCP ping or notification is not a free call: it counts only against the per-address cap.

Plans and limits puts numbers to the last group.