Defined Terms

A small glossary of terms Proper Tools uses with consistent meaning. Each entry holds the same definition across writing, talks, and standards work. Definitions are plain by design.

The glossary grows slowly, and only when a term is doing real work — when shared use across multiple surfaces depends on the same meaning being held.

Entries

• 2038-Class Risk — systemic infrastructure risks arising from timestamp rollover, time representation limits, and embedded timing dependencies in long-lived systems.
• Year 2038 Problem — the rollover condition affecting systems that store time as a signed 32-bit integer representing seconds since the Unix epoch.