---
title: Concepts
description: The vocabulary every other shebang doc assumes — projects, keys, public ids, and access modes.
---

# Concepts

These five pages define the words used everywhere else in these docs.

- [Projects and scoping](/concepts/projects-and-scoping) — how a project
  bounds what a key can reach.
- [Keys](/concepts/keys) — master vs. app tiers, and the `apps` scope
  list.
- [Public ids and urls](/concepts/public-ids-and-urls) — how `p.`, `f.`,
  and `sl.` links are built.
- [Access modes](/concepts/access-modes) — private, password, allow-list,
  public.
- [Rate limits and quotas](/concepts/rate-limits-and-quotas) — what's
  capped, and how.

Every service — sherpage, sherserve, sherlink, sherbase — reuses the same
four ideas: a project scopes where a resource lives, a key decides who's
calling and with how much authority, a public id is the address a
resource answers at once it's public, and an access mode decides who's
allowed to see it before anything is served. Reading these together is
more useful than reading any one service's own page in isolation.

If you haven't set anything up yet, start with
[getting started](/getting-started) instead — it walks through
creating an account, a project, and a key in order, rather than
explaining the underlying model first.