The Intropy model

Read this when a tutorial names a System, Component, Resource, Port, or Service.

Intropy describes an integration with a small set of terms. The same terms appear in the C# code, the CLI output, deployment manifests, traces, and these docs.

The five terms

Term	Meaning	Where you meet it
System	The named integration as a whole.	intropy sys create, OrderFlowSystem.cs
Component	One deployable unit inside a System.	order-extractor, order-loader, order-sync
Resource	Infrastructure the System owns.	Topic, internal queue
Port	A named edge to an external system.	order-extractor-source, order-loader-destination
Service	A platform capability the System calls but does not own.	idempotency, business incidents

Component kinds

Kind	Job	Tutorial
extractor	Pull from a source system and publish to a Topic.	Distribution
loader	Subscribe to a Topic and write to a destination system.	Distribution
transactional-integration	Move from one source to one destination inside one Component, through its own internal queue.	Transactional integration

Two common shapes

A Transactional Integration is one Component:

source Port → transactional-integration → destination Port
                  │
                  └─ internal queue

A Distribution is several Components joined by a Topic:

source Port → extractor → Topic → loader → destination Port
                              └→ loader → destination Port

The model stops at names. A Port named order-loader-destination might resolve to a local folder in the tutorial and SFTP in production. That resolution belongs to deployment configuration, not Component code.

Next: Systems and topology shows where these names are declared.