Star Atlas terms

Terms as this SDK uses them. Game vocabulary is checked against the game, and only the Solana vocabulary needed by the SDK is included.

Growing with the guides

This glossary grows with the guides: when a guide starts leaning on a term, the term lands here. If a guide uses a word this page does not explain, that is a bug worth reporting.

Game

SAGE — the part of Star Atlas where fleets fly, mine, craft, and trade. The SDK reads SAGE state.

C4 — the current generation of SAGE. Runs on its own program with its own account layouts; earlier generations are not compatible.

z.ink — the public test realm SAGE C4 runs on. A separate network from Solana mainnet.

Profile — a player’s on-chain identity. Created by the player, so there is no way to derive it from a wallet address; it has to be discovered or supplied.

Character — a profile’s presence inside SAGE. Owns fleets and accrues progress. One per profile.

Fleet — a group of ships travelling together. Ships move as fleets, never individually. A fleet has a state: docked, in transit, mining, and so on.

Starbase — a station where fleets dock, trade, and craft. Shared starbase data belongs to the world; a player’s own state at a starbase is separate.

Council Rank — a player’s account-wide progression level, raised through XP. Rising ranks unlock research, larger ships, additional fleets, and buildings.

XP — progression points earned per activity category (pilot, mining, crafting, combat, and so on). Levels are judged against the game’s thresholds, and research spends XP back out.

Research node — one unlockable in the research tree. It costs XP from specific categories, ATLAS, and sometimes resources; activating it grants its perk.

Perk — the permanent improvement a research node grants: a larger fleet limit, faster warp, cheaper crafting, and similar modifiers. Everything in effect for a character sums into one bundle of values.

Warp lane — a system-to-system link, and the third way a fleet travels (after subwarp and coordinate warp). Lanes define which systems neighbour each other, work only when both ends are held by the same faction, and charge an ATLAS toll keyed to the starbase level.

Claim stake — a deployable claim on a planet or other body: a hub to build extraction, processing, power, and storage infrastructure on, yielding resources over time.

Crafting hab — a player-owned production facility deployed at a starbase. Recipes run in it, and its buildings and modifiers set production speed and efficiency.

Recipe — the crafting rule: these inputs become that output, taking this long. Recipes are game data, the same for everyone.

Crafting process — one recipe executing in one crafting hab: a lifecycle with a start, a duration, and an end.

Rent — the ongoing cost of keeping a crafting hab or claim stake deployed. A balance that runs dry eventually means eviction.

ATLAS — the in-game currency used for rewards and market settlement.

Faction — one of the three allegiances: ONI, MUD, and Ustur. Affects standing, economics, and diplomacy.

Solana

Account — a slot of on-chain storage with an address, an owning program, and raw bytes. Everything the SDK reads is an account.

Address — the identifier for an account. The SDK uses the Address type from @solana/kit.

Program — deployed on-chain code. SAGE C4 is one program, and it owns the accounts the SDK reads.

RPC endpoint — a server that answers questions about the chain. You supply one; see setting up your RPC.

PDA — an address derived deterministically from known inputs rather than stored. When an account has one, it can be computed instead of searched for. Several SAGE account types do not have one, which is why some lookups need discovery.

Discriminator — the leading bytes identifying an account’s type. The SDK checks it before decoding, so a wrong account fails cleanly.

Commitment — how strongly the network has confirmed the chain state behind a read. A stronger commitment is safer but may lag behind the newest available state.

Signer — a wallet or another external object that can authorize a transaction for one address. Atlas Kit receives signers only for an explicit execution call; contexts and Plans do not store them.

Transaction — one submitted group of on-chain instructions. A transaction is atomic: all of its instructions succeed together or none take effect.

TypeScript and Atlas Kit

bigint — JavaScript’s exact integer type, written with an n suffix such as 10n. Atlas Kit uses it for raw game quantities that must not be rounded.

Cache — stored results that can be reused for a limited time instead of making the same RPC request again.

Context — the Atlas Kit object that holds one realm’s RPC connection, cache, known addresses, and optional providers.

Discriminated union — a TypeScript value whose kind field tells you which other fields are available. Fleet state uses this pattern.

Entry point — an import path for one part of the package, such as @aephia/atlas-kit/fleets.

Indexer — a service that helps find account addresses by relationship. Atlas Kit treats its results as hints and validates each account against the chain.

Plan — an inspectable description of a supported game action. It records the steps, required signers, affected addresses, preconditions, expected effects, and warnings without signing or submitting anything.

Snapshot — an immutable, translated view of account state from one read.