Glossary

Ensemble

Ensemble is a cloud workspace where product teams ship changes to real codebases on live preview environments, and coding agents get codebase context over MCP. It has three parts: Ensemble Studio, Ensemble Previews and Ensemble Context. What is Ensemble?

Ensemble Studio

Ensemble Studio is Ensemble's browser workspace: chat, a hot-reloading preview of your app, and logs, with nothing installed locally. Product managers, designers and founders use it to make and share changes. How to ship a change without local setup

Ensemble Previews

Ensemble Previews are full running copies of your app, one per branch or ticket, each at its own URL with its own services and seed data. They hibernate when idle and are private by default. What is a preview environment?

Ensemble Context

Ensemble Context is a codebase graph plus product knowledge, re-indexed when protected branches change. People and coding agents query it instead of re-reading the repository. Why coding agents re-read the repo

Preview environment

A preview environment is a temporary, running copy of an application for a single branch or change, deployed at its own URL. A full-stack preview includes backend services and a seeded database. It isn't production, and it isn't the shared staging server. What is a preview environment?

Builder seat

A builder seat is a paid Ensemble seat for a person who chats, edits or creates previews. Reviewers and people who only open preview links are free and don't need a seat. What is a builder seat?

Protected branch

A protected branch is a branch you mark as production, or as staging and production. Ensemble counts lines changed on protected branches for usage, and changes reach them only through your review process. Other branches are where previews and experiments happen. How to let non-engineers ship code safely

Share link

A share link is an expiring, revocable link that lets someone without an Ensemble account open one preview. It isn't public mode, and opening one doesn't make the viewer a builder. How to review a pull request without running it locally

Hibernation

Hibernation is the paused state of an idle preview environment. A hibernated Ensemble preview resumes when someone allowed to open it visits. Hibernated previews don't count against the plan's running-preview limit, and anonymous traffic can't wake them. How to reduce preview environment costs

Seed data

Seed data is the sample data loaded into a preview environment's database so reviewers can click through realistic flows. It should be synthetic or anonymized, never a copy of production. Preview environments with a seeded database

Product context

Product context is what a feature is for, who uses it, which code implements it, and what it touches, kept current alongside the code so an AI agent can look it up instead of guessing. Why your AI coding agent builds the wrong feature

MCP server

An MCP server is a service that exposes tools and resources to AI agents through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard. The Ensemble MCP server gives Claude Code, Cursor and other clients codebase and product context. MCP servers for codebase context

Mariachi

Mariachi is an open-source backend framework built for AI coding agents, with one shape for every feature and swappable vendor adapters. Ensemble will use it to start new products. How to build an app with AI you won't have to rewrite