# 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](/earthly-0.6/docs/earthfile.md) * The [earthly command reference](/earthly-0.6/docs/earthly-command.md) --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.earthly.dev/earthly-0.6/docs/misc/definitions.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.