Context: Team Kitty and Zeitgeist

Status (2026-10-14): the hosted, sync and drain surfaces and their clients were removed from open-core in #6164. The removed code is preserved in spec-kitty/event-router (PR #45). This page is now a glossary and a map of what is gone, so a reader who meets the old vocabulary can translate it. Do not build toward hosted surfaces unless the operator asks.

What was removed

Team Kitty is the hosted product. Zeitgeist is the per-team presence-and-moments relay it runs. Until #6164 the CLI shipped the client side of that: it authenticated, minted a capability, and published each status moment to the team's relay when an opt-in called drain was on. All of that client code left this repository:

the auth, issue-search, live-work, moments, routes and zeitgeist CLI entries;
the zeitgeist_client/ and saas_client/ packages and the auth package;
the drain posture (core/hosted_posture.py) and status/zeitgeist_bridge.py.

Nothing hosted ships configured or gates a release. The SaaS and relay repositories are separate and are not covered here.

What stays

The produce seam. src/specify_cli/status/adapters.py is the publish/subscribe surface for status events. Open-core ships no default handler, so every fire_* call is a no-op until a transport owner registers one. Producing an event never depends on a drain. status/emit.py still writes the canonical event log first.
The Mission Status Read API (producer) and the consumer side built on it ("Multiplayer Mode": mission-ui, the pack composer). See ADR 2026-10-01-2 and the Amendment in ADR 2026-10-06-1 (its drain and hiding mechanics are now historical).
One-way cleanup migrations. For example m_4_0_0_retired_hosted_target deletes a stale config.toml [sync].server_url that names the retired app.spec-kitty.ai. It is self-contained and touches nothing else.

"Sync" is dead

The transport called "sync" (a local daemon, an offline queue, a per-project consent store, spec-kitty sync opt-in, api/v1/sync/*) was deleted in August 2026, and the specify_cli.sync package with it. tests/architectural/test_no_retired_subsystems.py refuses its return. The word survives only as residue in identifiers, stale docs and comments. When you read "sync" here, translate it: it is leftover naming, never design against or "re-enable" it. spec-kitty charter sync is unrelated: it syncs charter artifacts.

Canonical vocabulary

For where Team Kitty sits among the Spec Kitty Inc. product lines (Build Kitty, Brain Kitty), see Product Lines.

Term	Meaning	Do not say
Team Kitty	The hosted product (separate SaaS repository). Not part of open-core.	"the SaaS sync", "Spec Kitty Cloud"
Zeitgeist	The presence-and-gossip relay Team Kitty runs, one container per team.	"the event server", "sync server"
Moment	One content-agnostic, bounded status event published to a relay.	"sync event"
Drain	The former client-side opt-in for automatic outbound hosted interaction. Removed with the hosted surfaces.	"sync", "fan-out enabled"

Stale surfaces you will meet

Marked deprecated and kept for history: docs/guides/project-sync-consent.md and the 2.x/3.x sync ADRs. docs/architecture/team-kitty-saas.md and docs/operations/logged-out-teamspace.md are now stubs that only keep old links resolving; docs/operations/sync-drain.md and docs/operations/ci-machine-auth.md were deleted (#6219). The removed code lives in the spec-kitty/event-router repository. ADR hosted interaction is opt-in and convergence retirement and client-repo inversion describe the earlier design. See also system events for the canonical event envelope.