Throughout the guidelines, the following terms should be understood:

Architecture Board
The Azure Developer Experience Architecture Board is comprised of language experts who advise and review client libraries used for accessing Azure services.
Azure SDK
The collection of client libraries for a single target language, used for accessing Azure services.
Azure Core
A dependency of many client libraries. The Azure Core library provides access to the HTTP pipeline, common credential types, and other types that are appropriate to the Azure SDK as a whole.
Client
A class that provides methods to send requests to the service.
Client Library
A library (and associated tools, documentation, and samples) that consumers use to ease working with an Azure service. There is generally a client library per Azure service and per target language. Sometimes a single client library will contain the ability to connect to multiple services.
Consumer
Where appropriate to disambiguate between the various types of developers, we use the term consumer to indicate the developer who is using a client library in an app to connect to an Azure service.
Docstrings
The comments embedded within the code that describe the API surface being implemented. The docstrings are extracted and post-processed during the build to generate API reference documentation.
Library Developer
Where appropriate to disambiguate between the various types of developers, we use the term library developer to indicate the developer who is writing a client library.
Package
A client library after it has been packaged for distribution to consumers. Packages are generally installed using a package manager from a package repository.
Package Repository
Each client library is published separately to the appropriate language-specific package repository. For example, we distribute JavaScript libraries to npmjs.org (also known as the NPM Registry), and Python libraries to PyPI. These releases are performed exclusively by the Azure SDK engineering systems team. Consumers install packages using a package manager. For example, a JavaScript consumer might use yarn, npm, or similar, whereas a Python consumer will use pip to install packages into their project.
Progressive Concept Disclosure
The first interaction with the client library should not rely on advanced service concepts. As the consumer of the library becomes more adept, we expose the concepts necessary at the point at which the consumer needs those concepts for implementation. Progressive Disclosure was first discussed by the Nielson Norman Group as an approach to designing better user interfaces.
Service client
The starting points for consumers calling Azure services with the Azure SDK. A service client is distinguished from other clients in that it can be directly constructed. Each client library should have at least one service client in its main namespace, so it’s easy to discover.

Requirements

Each requirement in this document is labelled and color-coded to show the relative importance. In order from highest importance to lowest importance:

✅ DO adopt this requirement for the client library. If you feel you need an exception, engage with the Architecture Board prior to implementation.

⛔️ DO NOT adopt this requirement for the client library. If you feel you need an exception, engage with the Architecture Board prior to implementation.

☑️ YOU SHOULD strongly consider this requirement for the client library. If not following this advice, you MUST disclose the variance during the Architecture Board design review.

⚠️ YOU SHOULD NOT strongly consider this requirement for the client library. If not following this advice, you MUST disclose the variance during the Architecture Board design review.

✔️ YOU MAY consider this advice if appropriate to your situation. No notification to the architecture board is required.