Glossary

Definitions for Literal-specific security, cryptography, API, and workflow terms.

Definitions for Literal-specific terms used across the documentation. For broader context, follow the link in each entry.

Literal Concepts

Grant

An encrypted access package created by a document holder for a specific recipient. A grant wraps the document’s encryption key for that recipient and binds the access to an expiration time.

See Grants & Sharing.

Entity

An organization in Literal: a company, institution, or verifier that manages member access, organization metadata, and organization-scoped search under one cryptographic boundary.

See Entities & Memberships.

Entity Membership

A member’s authorized association with an entity. Membership records use opaque tokens and encrypted member identifiers rather than plaintext relationship fields.

See Entities & Memberships.

Entity Delivery

A direct push of encrypted document access from an entity admin to a specific organization member. The recipient still accepts or denies the delivery.

See Entity Deliveries.

Document Holder

The party who uploaded a document and controls how it is shared. Document holders create grants, accept or deny claims, and revoke access.

Verifier

A party that checks a verification seal for a document. Verifiers are often organizations performing KYC or compliance review.

See Verifying Document Seals.

Organization Scope

The organization-scoped context for document access, search, and key material. A user can operate in personal scope and one or more organization scopes simultaneously.

See Entities & Memberships.

Verification Seal

An encrypted, signed artifact produced by the secure enclave during document processing. The seal lets a verifier check authenticity, integrity, and specificity for a processed document.

See Document Lifecycle.

Privacy And Routing

A one-way token generated from a plaintext value and scoped key material. Literal stores and compares blind indexes for search, but does not receive the plaintext value that produced the token.

See Encrypted Search.

The pattern of storing sensitive relationships as opaque cryptographic tokens instead of plaintext foreign keys. Literal can compare tokens for authorized lookups, but a database read does not reveal document ownership, grant relationships, or membership rosters.

See Blind Routing.

View Tag

A short, ambiguous marker attached to a grant. Recipients query view tags to discover possible grants; a tag query intentionally returns multiple unrelated grants alongside the genuine one.

See Grants & Sharing.

Document Token

A blind token derived client-side that identifies a document without exposing a plaintext document identifier to the application server.

See Blind Routing.

Owner Token

A blind token that identifies a document’s owner for authorized lookups without revealing the owner’s plaintext identity.

See Blind Routing.

Grant Claim Token

A per-grant token derived from the recipient’s key material. Each claim token is unique to its grant, so separate claims cannot be linked back to a single plaintext recipient identifier.

See Grants & Sharing.

Sealed Member Identifier

An encrypted member identifier stored on a membership record and bound to a specific entity. Replaying a sealed identifier from one entity into another fails by construction.

See Entities & Memberships.

Keys And Cryptography

User Master Key (UMK)

The root of a document holder’s personal key hierarchy, derived from the user’s password on the client device. The User Master Key never reaches Literal.

See Key Hierarchy.

Data Encryption Key (DEK)

A per-document symmetric key generated by the client at upload time. The DEK encrypts document content and metadata and is wrapped separately for each authorized access path.

See Key Hierarchy.

Entity Master Key (EMK)

The root of an organization’s key hierarchy, generated and unwrapped only inside the secure enclave.

See Key Hierarchy.

Platform Key

A hardware-protected key used by the attested enclave path for platform wrapping operations and verification artifacts. The private key is not exposed to application code or server operators.

See Platform Public Key and Key Hierarchy.

Key Wrapping

Encrypting one key with another so the wrapped key can be stored or transmitted safely. Document keys are wrapped along multiple authorized access paths (personal, organization, platform, grant).

See Key Hierarchy.

Delivery Keypair

A per-membership keypair used for entity deliveries. Delivery encryption keys let admins encrypt document access for a specific member; delivery signing keys support proof-of-possession during acceptance.

See Entity Deliveries.

Hybrid Cryptography

Combining established classical algorithms with post-quantum algorithms in the same operation, so the system does not depend on a single cryptographic family.

See Key Hierarchy.

OPAQUE

A password-authenticated key exchange that lets a client prove knowledge of a password without sending it to the server. Literal uses OPAQUE for registration and login.

See Authentication.

OPRF

An Oblivious Pseudorandom Function. The client blinds an input, the server evaluates the OPRF without learning the input, and the client unblinds the result locally. Used in Literal for the login bucket and for refresh-token derivation during browser session binding.

See Deriving The Login Bucket.

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