Terminology Glossary¶

The terminology glossary explains terms like VPD, EC, or the pre-harvest interval right inside the application — short, tailored to your experience level, and without leaving the app to check the documentation. The explanations come from the AI Assistant's curated knowledge base and also work without logging in.

Prerequisites¶

Your instance operator must have AI features enabled instance-wide. If not, the glossary page is just as unreachable as the AI Assistant — details under For Technical Users / Self-Hosters.
Logging in is not required: the glossary is purely factual knowledge with no reference to your specific plants, so it also works in anonymous Light Mode.
If the instance uses a cloud provider instead of a local model as its default, generating a new explanation additionally needs your "AI processing via cloud provider" consent — see Granting consent. What counts is the instance's default provider, not your garden's: an explanation is generated once and shown to every garden. Reading an existing explanation needs no consent. This doesn't apply in Light Mode, since it always processes locally.
Generating a new explanation counts towards your daily quota of AI requests, as with the AI Assistant.
To generate a new explanation, your garden must also have AI features enabled — the same garden-level approval the AI chat needs. If it is off, Kamerplanter refuses to generate ("The AI features are currently disabled for this garden."). You can still read the terms and any explanation that has already been prepared.

Browsing the glossary¶

Step 1: Open the glossary¶

Open Glossary in the menu. You'll see an overview of all curated terms, grouped by categories such as Environment & climate, Fertilisation, Watering, Growth phases, Outdoor & garden, and Plant protection.

Step 2: Select a term¶

Tap a term to open its full explanation. The explanation appears in the same AI envelope as the AI Assistant — with AI labeling, model name, and an expandable source list. Clicking Back to overview returns you to the term list.

Follow related terms directly

Below every explanation you'll find clickable chips for related terms — for example "VPD" leads to "leaf temperature" and "transpiration". Clicking one opens the next explanation directly, so you can work your way from term to term without jumping back to the overview.

Explanations adapt to your experience level¶

The explanation you see is tailored to your configured experience level (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert). As a beginner you get a simple explanation in everyday language without exact numbers; as an expert you get the same explanation with concrete value ranges — for example target EC values per growth phase or substrate-dependent notes. If you change your experience level in the account settings, explanations fetched afterward will reflect it.

Example: the term \"EC\"

Beginner: "EC measures how many nutrients are in the water."
Expert: "Vegetative: 1.0–1.4 mS/cm, flowering: 1.4–1.8 mS/cm, depending on substrate (hydro vs. soil)."

When the knowledge base has no matching hit¶

Not every term has a sufficiently relevant hit in the knowledge base. In that case, the glossary honestly shows you an editorially maintained short definition instead of an AI-generated answer, labeled "Short definition (no knowledge-base match)". This way you're never given a fabricated or unreliable answer.

Detailed explanations are prepared in advance, not produced while you read¶

Opening a term costs nothing and triggers no AI request: the glossary shows you the explanation that has already been prepared, and as long as none exists for a term in your language and experience level, you see the editorial short definition — the same honest label as above.

Explanations are prepared in two places:

automatically, after the operator re-ingests the knowledge base. The cache is cleared and then refilled in the background for the whole term catalogue.
on request, when somebody with the Gardener or Lead role in a garden that has AI features enabled has an explanation generated. Viewers, anonymous visitors and gardens without AI enabled cannot trigger it.

That is deliberate: every AI explanation costs the installation's operator compute time or money. Previously, the first person to click a term decided when that cost was incurred — in anonymous Light Mode, somebody without an account at all.

You only see the Generate detailed explanation button while AI features are available. If Kamerplanter refuses to generate because AI features are switched off for your garden or for the whole installation, the button disappears, for the other terms too, and the reason is shown in its place. Another attempt would be refused the same way. Other errors, such as a used-up daily quota, keep the button so you can try again later.

The inline question-mark icon¶

Partially available: question-mark icons on other pages

The question-mark icon that opens the same explanation as a compact popover right next to a term has already been built as a component and works correctly wherever it's wired in. Right now, though, it doesn't yet appear on any plant, dashboard, or substrate page — rolling it out across existing views is a separate, follow-up piece of work. Until then, you can reach the same explanations through the glossary overview above.

Once the icon is wired into a page, here's how it works: clicking the small question mark next to a term opens a compact popover with the same explanation as the glossary overview — including related terms, back navigation within the popover, and its own close button. You never have to leave the page for it.

Light Mode & anonymous use¶

The glossary is one of the few features that works entirely without a user account: neither the term list nor the individual explanations require a tenant or personal reference, so no consent is needed and the feature is available in Light Mode just as it is in full mode. Light Mode always processes locally — an external cloud provider is never used. To keep the glossary usable for everyone, the number of requests per minute for anonymous use is limited; if you open many terms in quick succession, you may briefly see an error message — just wait a moment and try again.

For Technical Users / Self-Hosters¶

The glossary uses the same instance-wide AI toggle as the AI Assistant (AI_FEATURES_ENABLED=true), The additional garden-level toggle (stage 2, tenant.settings.ai_features_enabled) only gates generating (POST /api/v1/t/{slug}/glossary/term/{slug}/generate): if it is off, the route answers 403 (AI_DISABLED_FOR_TENANT) before the cache, the daily quota or the language model is touched; if the instance-wide toggle is off already, it answers 404. Reading (the term list, single terms, the public routes) needs no garden-level activation, because it makes no AI request. Details on the environment variable are in Environment Variables — AI Assistant.

If the instance's system default provider (a provider record without a tenant) is a cloud provider, generating runs the regular "AI processing via cloud provider" consent check (ai_cloud_processing). A single garden's default provider plays no part, because an explanation is generated once and served to every garden; its cloud notice is stored with the entry. Which language model actually answers is set by the Knowledge Service through its own environment (LLM_PROVIDER) — see Privacy & GDPR. If consent is missing or the associated user can't be determined unambiguously, the request is rejected outright rather than silently redirected to a local model.

Like the AI Assistant, every AI request to the knowledge base is logged, without any plant or account data included in it. Simply reading an already-prepared term makes no such request and therefore writes no log entry; previously every anonymous call wrote one.

Frequently Asked Questions¶

Do I need to be logged in to use the glossary?

No. The glossary works in both full mode and anonymous Light Mode without logging in — provided the operator has enabled AI features instance-wide.

Why do I sometimes see 'Short definition (no knowledge-base match)' instead of a detailed explanation?

That means the knowledge base didn't find a sufficiently relevant match for this term. Instead of making up an unreliable AI answer, the glossary then shows you a short, editorially reviewed definition.

Why does the explanation change when I switch my experience level?

Explanations are prepared separately per experience level — beginners get everyday language, experts get concrete value ranges. After a level change you see the version for your new level; if none has been prepared for it yet, the editorial short definition comes first.

Why do I only see the short definition for a term even though AI is enabled?

Then no detailed explanation has been prepared for that term in your language and experience level yet. Reading does not produce one — anybody who is a Gardener or Lead in their garden can request it, and after a knowledge-base re-ingest the operator refills the catalogue in the background.

Why don't I see the question-mark icon next to terms on other pages yet?

Rolling it out to existing pages (plant detail page, dashboard, substrate editor, and more) isn't finished yet. Until then, you can find the same explanations via the glossary overview.