Glossary

Definitions, and where this library's vocabulary differs from AMQP's.

Mapping to AMQP terms

Two runtime classes are named differently from the AMQP convention. The functionality is identical; only the naming differs.

amqp-contract	AMQP standard	Role
Client (TypedAmqpClient)	Publisher / Producer	Sends messages
Worker (TypedAmqpWorker)	Consumer / Subscriber	Receives and processes messages
Contract	Schema / specification	Defines exchanges, queues, messages

Inside a contract, the standard terms are used: a publisher is a named publishing endpoint and a consumer is a named consuming endpoint. So a single client carries many publishers, and a single worker serves many consumers.

Keeping that distinction straight resolves most confusion: client and worker are runtime objects, publisher and consumer are contract entries.

Terms

AsyncResult

The asynchronous result type from unthrown. AsyncResult<T, E> resolves to a Result<T, E>. Awaiting one does not throw on failure. See errors as values.

Binding

A rule connecting an exchange to a queue (or to another exchange) with a routing key or pattern. Bindings are derived from consumers rather than declared — see core concepts.

Bridge exchange

A local exchange that forwards to, or receives from, an exchange in another domain, letting a contract stay free of remote topology. See bridge domains.

Choreography

The coordination style this library's vocabulary is built for: services react to each other's messages with no central coordinator — events fan out, commands go to their single owner. This is why the authoring API says event and command rather than AsyncAPI's transport-neutral send/receive (the mapping is mechanical: an event or command publisher is a send operation, a consumer is a receive operation, an RPC is a request/reply pair — the AsyncAPI generator emits exactly that). Its sibling temporal-contract deliberately uses different vocabulary (workflows, activities) because Temporal is an orchestrator — one coordinator drives the steps. Same family, different coordination model, different words on purpose.

Client

TypedAmqpClient — the runtime object that publishes messages and makes RPC calls. What AMQP calls a publisher or producer.

Command

A message instructing a single owner to do work. Many callers, one consumer. The consumer is defined first (defineCommandConsumer) and the publisher derived from it. See choreography for why this vocabulary exists.

Consumer

A named entry in a contract's consumers map, binding a queue to a message shape. Requires exactly one handler on the worker. Not to be confused with the worker itself.

Contract

A single definition producing both the TypeScript types and the AMQP topology. Built with defineContract.

Dead letter / DLX / DLQ

A dead-letter exchange receives messages that were rejected, expired, or overflowed a queue limit; the queue bound to it is the dead-letter queue. See route dead letters.

declare* / define*

The two verb prefixes split the contract boundary. define* (defineContract, defineQueue, defineEventPublisher, …) authors the contract — pure data, shared by every service. declare* (declareHandler, declareHandlers, declareMiddleware) builds the implementation side against that contract, with types inferred from it. If a function starts with define, its output belongs in the shared contract package; if it starts with declare, it belongs in the service that implements it. The convention is shared across the btravstack family (temporal-contract uses the same split).

Defect

unthrown's third channel, for failures that were not anticipated. In this library a defect's cause is always a TechnicalError. Distinct from a modeled error, which appears in the type signature.

Event

A message announcing something that happened. One publisher, any number of consumers. The publisher is defined first (defineEventPublisher) and consumers attach to it. See choreography for why this vocabulary exists.

Exchange

The AMQP entity that receives published messages and routes them to queues by type — topic, direct, fanout or headers. Defaults to a durable topic exchange.

Handler

A function processing one message for one consumer or RPC. Returns AsyncResult<void, HandlerError> (consumer) or AsyncResult<TResponse, …> (RPC). Never async, never throws.

HandlerError

The union RetryableError | NonRetryableError. A union type, not a class — discriminate with isHandlerError, not instanceof.

Interceptor

A client-side wrapper around publish() or call(). The publishing counterpart to middleware. See add middleware.

Message

A payload schema plus optional headers schema and documentation, built with defineMessage. Shared by the publishers and consumers referencing it.

Middleware

A worker-side wrapper around handler invocation, able to inject typed context, substitute the payload, or short-circuit. Runs after validation.

Modeled error

A failure that appears in an operation's E — anticipated, branchable, and something the compiler makes you handle. Contrast with a defect.

Prefetch

The cap on unacknowledged messages a consumer holds at once. Controls concurrency and memory. See tune performance.

Publisher

A named entry in a contract's publishers map, pairing an exchange, a message and a routing key. Invoked as client.publish(name, payload).

Quorum queue

The default queue type, replicating through Raft consensus. Always durable; cannot be exclusive or auto-deleting. Prioritises messages from their priority property on RabbitMQ 4.0+ without maxPriority, which is classic-only.

Routing key

The string a publisher attaches to a message, matched against binding patterns. * matches exactly one dot-separated segment, # matches zero or more — wildcards are valid in patterns, not in keys.

RPC

A request/reply exchange declaring a request schema, a response schema and optionally a map of declared errors. Owns its queue. See use request/reply.

Standard Schema

The common interface this library validates against, letting Zod, Valibot, ArkType and others be used interchangeably.

TechnicalError

The error class carried as the cause of every defect — transport and framework failures. Never a modeled error. See error model.

Topology

The set of exchanges, queues and bindings a contract describes, declared against the broker when a worker starts.

Worker

TypedAmqpWorker — the runtime object that consumes messages and dispatches them to handlers. What AMQP calls a consumer or subscriber.

Coming from another AMQP library

// Elsewhere
const publisher = await createPublisher(config);
await publisher.publish(exchange, routingKey, message);
const consumer = await createConsumer(queue, handler);

// Here
const client = await TypedAmqpClient.create({ contract, urls }).getOrThrow();
await client.publish("orderCreated", message).getOrThrow();

const worker = await TypedAmqpWorker.create({
  contract,
  handlers: { processOrder: handler },
  urls,
}).getOrThrow();

The exchange and routing key are absent from the publish call because they live in the contract, keyed by publisher name.

Note the two different extractors: .get() on create (its modeled error channel is empty) and .getOrThrow() on publish (which has a modeled MessageValidationError). See error model.

Where next

• Core concepts — how these fit together.
• Topology options — every option on every term above.