> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.earthly.dev/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.earthly.dev/docs/misc/definitions.md).

# Definitions

This page presents some common terms used throughout the earthly documentation. Understanding these terms with help you understand how to use earthly.

* **Earthly** - the build automation system as a whole
* **`earthly`** - the CLI tool used to interact with Earthly
* **Earthfile** - a file (named literally `Earthfile`) which contains a series of targets and their respective recipes
* **buildkitd** - a [daemon built by the Docker team](https://github.com/moby/buildkit) and used by Earthly to execute builds. It executes LLB, the same low-level primitives used when building Dockerfiles. The buildkitd daemon is started automatically in a docker container, by `earthly`, when executing builds.
* **recipe** - a specific series of build steps
* **target** - the label used to identify a recipe. 'Target' is also used to refer to a build of a specific target.
* **build context** - the main directory made available to the build for copying files from
* **artifact** - a file resulting from executing a target (not all targets have artifacts)
* **image** - a docker image resulting from executing a target (not all targets have images)

## See also

* The [Earthfile reference](/docs/earthfile.md)
* The [earthly command reference](/docs/earthly-command.md)


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