An actor is any entity that can perform actions in Metorial: a person or an automated agent. Actors own one or more identities. Examples include a developer using the Metorial CLI, a support agent using a portal, or a background workflow.
A consumer is a user who interacts with a Metorial instance through an interface such as a portal, the Metorial CLI, or a custom surface. Consumers only see resources they are allowed to access, including providers and magic MCP servers assigned to them.
A consumer profile is how the same person is represented in a specific interface (for example a portal versus the CLI). One person can have multiple profiles; access rules remain consistent across them.
A credential is concrete access to a specific external provider for an identity. It combines provider authentication configuration, provider config, and provider deployments into a fully configured connection ready to use.
A custom provider is a user-defined integration that connects Metorial to your own services using MCP-compatible interfaces, for example a Docker-based MCP server, a remote MCP server, or a Metorial-hosted server. Once deployed, it behaves like any other provider in sessions and configurations.
A custom provider deployment is created when you introduce a new custom provider version. It runs build and discovery, moves through states until successful, and enables a standard provider version you can use across Metorial.
A custom provider version is a versioned snapshot of your custom integration. New versions do not affect existing ones. Remote MCP servers are typically not version controlled by Metorial.
An identity is a collection of external access tied to an actor: which accounts or systems that actor can use. An identity is owned by exactly one actor and contains one or more credentials. Identities can be shared through identity delegation.
Identity delegation lets one actor temporarily use another actor’s credentials to act on their behalf. Delegation is controlled, scoped, and can be time-bound.
An organization contains projects; a project contains instances. An instance is an isolated environment (for example development or production) with its own resources such as custom providers, sessions, and logs. Changes in one instance do not affect others.
A magic MCP server is a Metorial resource that exposes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint for your consumers, alongside catalog providers. You assign it per instance and access rules; users connect through the same surfaces as other integrations (for example a portal or the Metorial CLI).
The Metorial CLI is the command-line interface for consumers to interact with Metorial: connect to providers and magic MCP servers, fetch logs, and automate workflows.
An organization is the top-level workspace in Metorial. It typically represents your company or a major team. All projects and their instances live inside an organization, and it is the central place to manage members and global access boundaries.
A participant is any entity involved in a session, for example a connected client or a session provider. A session can have multiple participants at the same time.
A portal is a custom user interface on top of a Metorial instance. It exposes selected providers and resources without granting the full dashboard, and supports authentication such as SAML SSO or email login.
A project groups related work inside an organization, for example a product, feature, or team. You can set access separately per project so teams only see what they are assigned.
A provider is an integration with an external system. It defines what is possible, typically tools callable via MCP or the Metorial API, and optionally triggers for external events. Providers are versioned, can be built-in or custom, and appear in the catalog.
A provider auth config stores authentication material such as API keys or OAuth tokens for a provider. It is required for authenticated providers and optional when authentication is not needed. You can maintain multiple auth configs.
A provider config stores non-sensitive settings for a provider, for example regions, endpoints, or feature flags. Metorial can create defaults when none are required. Multiple configs per provider are supported.
A provider deployment is the runtime instance that combines a provider with a provider config and provider auth config and executes requests. Multiple deployments can share the same configs and scale independently. For how deployments fit into the overall model, see Deployment.
A provider version is a specific release of a provider. New versions can add or change tools and triggers while older versions keep existing setups stable.
A role is a named set of permissions (scopes) that describes what actions someone can perform, for example read-only versus full management. Policies attach roles to members or teams.
A session is a connectable environment that exposes tools from one or more providers through a single interface. Session providers attach each provider; clients connect via session connections. Activity is recorded in logs.
Tools are the callable actions exposed by a provider. They are invoked through MCP or the Metorial API and may return data or perform operations in external systems.
A trigger lets a provider react to events in an external system. When a trigger fires, a callback can notify your application so you can run event-driven workflows.
