Concepts
The data model and protocols that every SDK and product on Sankofa builds on — tenancy, identity, events, sessions, decisions, retention.
This section explains the concepts every Sankofa SDK and product is built on. You don't need to read it in order — pick the topic relevant to what you're building. The pages here describe what a concept is and why it works the way it does. The product and SDK sections describe how to use them in practice.
Account model
How your team's data is organized inside Sankofa.
Tenancy
Organizations and projects
The boundary for events, billing, RBAC, and API keys. One organization, many projects.
Tenancy
Environments and API keys
Live vs. test environments per project; how the engine routes traffic via the key on each request.
Tenancy
RBAC and teams
Viewer, Editor, Admin, Owner — what each role can do, and how teams scope access to projects.
Data model
How user behavior turns into rows in ClickHouse.
Data model
Events
The atomic unit. Naming conventions, properties, and how events flow through every product.
Data model
Identity and aliases
Anonymous-to-known stitching. How identify and alias work, and what gets rewritten server-side.
Data model
Sessions
Session boundaries, foreground/background detection, and how sessions correlate with replays.
Data model
Default properties
Device, OS, geo, and app metadata the SDK adds for free. Which fields get promoted to indexed columns.
Data model
Cohorts
Static and dynamic cohorts, refresh cadence, and how cohorts feed Switch / Config / Pulse decisions.
Ingestion and decisions
The two protocols every SDK speaks to the engine.
Protocol
Ingestion model
Client → engine → ClickHouse. Batching, backpressure, retries, and how the engine acks events.
Protocol
The decision handshake
One ETag-cached snapshot per session powers Switch, Config, and Pulse triggers — together.
Protocol
Exposure tracking
Per-call vs handshake-level exposures and why the distinction matters for experiment math.
Protocol
Data retention
How long events, replays, and decision logs live. Per-tier retention, PII redaction, and legal hold.