What is a Runtime Instance?
An Instance is one customer working relationship with a Service: their settings, their files, their connected tools and every run they have made so far.
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A Runtime Instance on YAMO is one working relationship with a Service. It holds everything that belongs to the person using it rather than to the method: the settings they filled in, the files they uploaded, the tools they authorised, the conversation, the schedule, and every run they have made so far.
If a Service is the thing on the shelf, an Instance is your copy of the arrangement with it. It is often shortened to Instance after the first mention.
What an Instance holds
- The values it was configured with, and the answers given each run.
- Its own reference files and uploads.
- The Connections bound to it, where a Service uses those.
- The conversation, so the context of the work is not lost between runs.
- Its live schedule, if it runs on one.
- Every run it has made, and every artifact those runs produced.
An Instance can sit for months with no runs, or hold hundreds. It outlives any one of them. And it never changes the Playbook it consumes: many customers can run the same method at the same time without any of their work touching.
Instance, or Run?
This is the confusion worth naming, because the two words get swapped and the meaning changes completely.
An Instance is the relationship; a Run is one occasion. An Instance is long lived and accumulates; a Run starts, does the work, and finishes. "How many runs has this Instance made" is a sensible question. "How many instances did that run take" is not.
An Instance also cannot exist against a Draft Service. Until the Service is deployed there is nothing to have a relationship with, and every path that could create one checks that first.
Who owns what
The Instance belongs to the person consuming the Service, not to the business that published it. So the operator of a public Service can see that a confirmed customer ran it, and the commercial record of that, and no more: not the customer's answers, not their files, not their connected tools, and not the finished work.
What to read next
- What is a Run? for the thing an Instance accumulates.
- Instance for the one-sentence version.
- Run for what actually happens during one.
More in Concepts
Related
What is a Run?
A Run is one execution of a Playbook inside an Instance, from whatever started it to the finished artifact. It is the unit YAMO meters and charges for.What is a Connector?
A Connector is a tool a Playbook says it needs in order to do its work. It is a requirement written in the document, not an account or a password.What is a Connection?
A Connection is the access you have authorised, which is what turns a tool a Playbook asks for into a tool a run can actually reach on your behalf.What is a Reference file?
A Reference file is a document a Playbook reads while it works: your house style, your offer, your watchlist. They live together in your Knowledge Vault.What is a Playbook?
A Playbook is a way of working written down as a document that software can follow: the steps, the tools they may use and the knowledge they read.What is a Play?
A Play is one numbered step inside a Playbook. It says what that step does, what it reads, what it hands on, and which tools it is allowed to call.Pricing
How YAMO charges: you pay for the runs you make, and nothing for the ones you do not. What a run is, what it includes, and what publishing costs.Who it's for
The six kinds of expert YAMO is built for, and what changes when the method you already follow becomes a Service that somebody else can run.
Open a Playbook that does this
Every template in the library publishes its contract and a real example output.