Glossary

ReactiveDynamics is a Petri net engine, and since v0.3 its API uses standard Petri-net vocabulary — place, marking, arc — in place of the chemical-reaction-network words it inherited from its Catalyst-derived DSL surface (see ADR 0017). This page is the term dictionary: what each concept is called here, and which published family of Petri nets to read if you want the theory behind it.

A token is a discrete unit of resource sitting in a place — the Petri-net sense of the word, unrelated to language-model tokens. When this documentation says "token" it always means the former.

Two registers, deliberately

The reference pages and the normative contract say place, marking and arc, because those are the names in the code and in the literature. The tutorials and case studies say resource pool for the same thing — it is the word a portfolio or capacity discussion actually uses — glossed once at first use as "a place, in Petri-net terms". Both registers describe one object; nothing in the engine distinguishes them.

Core vocabulary

Which literature answers a question

The mapping from RD's features onto the published Petri-net extensions, so you know where to look.

Renamed in v0.3

Each retired name still resolves for one release and warns; see ADR 0017 for the full migration.

The serialized JSON document renamed with them. The exporter emits only the new keys, so re-exporting a document written before v0.3 migrates it; the loader reads the retired keys for one release and warns.