Terminology

The vocabulary is not decoration. A process manager gives you a lot of nouns to keep straight, and sheep are a better mnemonic than "target group" or "managed unit".

Where the joke would cost clarity it gets dropped: kill is called kill, error messages are written in plain technical English, and every themed verb has a straight alias that works forever.

The lexicon

the shepherdthe daemonlog messages, docsyes

the flockevery managed process, as a setshep flock (aliases list, ls)yes

a sheepone managed process (singular only)shep describe <name>yes

a folda namespace or groupshep fold backend, fold = in configyes

Flockfilethe app config fileFlockfile.toml / .yaml / .json / .json5yes

bleatslogsshep bleats (alias logs)yes

musterbring a saved flock backshep save, then shep musteryes

the shepherd channela private pipe on fd 3 between daemon and appchannel = true, shep triggeryes

a lamba child process of a sheeptree-kill, describe's tree viewyes

a doga plugin process the shepherd supervisesshep enable metrics, shep dogsyes

a barka webhook alert[dog.bark.sinks] config, shep barksyes

the whistlethe MCP interface agents talk toshep whistleyes

the lookoutthe terminal dashboardshep lookout (alias dash)partly

adopt / rehomeregister or drop a third-party dogshep adopt <name> <path>yes

that'll dograceful stop, after the real herding commandshep thatlldoyes

stockchange how many instances of an app run (the stocking rate)shep stock <name> <count> (alias scale)yes

signalsend a signal to one sheep's own processshep signal <selector> <signal>yes

whisperwrite a line to a sheep's stdinshep whisper <selector> <line> (alias sendline)yes

set / get / unsetthe flat key-value junk drawershep set, shep get, shep unsetyes

Sheepdogs and sheep were separate ideas from the start

So "dog" never means the daemon. The shepherd is the shepherd. Dogs are plugins that work for it — metrics andbark ship inside the binary, andshep adopt runs anyone else's.

Usage rules

Readability beats theme, every time.

Straight verbs always work

start, stop, restart, list, logs and delete are first-class aliases forever. Sheep terms are the personality layer, not a wall.

Destructive operations keep plain names

kill, delete, exit codes and error messages carry zero whimsy — misreading one costs a process.

Types may be themed when self-evident

Flock, Fold and Bark are fine. Heft as a struct name is not; it is called host.

Playful in prose, exact in reference

The README can say shep keeps your flock alive. The config reference says process.

Log and error output stays technical

The dog barks in webhooks, not in stderr.