The purpose of each circuit server is to host a collection of control primitives, called elements, on behalf of the user. On each server the hosted elements are organized in a hierarchy (similarly to the file system in Apache Zookeeper), whose nodes are called anchors. Anchors (akin to file system directories) have names and each anchor can host one circuit element or be empty.
The hierarchies of all servers are logically unified by a global circuit root anchor, whose children are the individual circuit server hierarchies. A typical anchor path looks like this
/X317c2314a386a9db/hi/charlie
The first component of the path is the ID of the circuit server hosting the leaf anchor.
Except for the circuit root anchor (which does not correspond to any particular circuit server), all other anchors can store a process or a channel element, at most one, and additionally can have any number of sub- anchors. In a way, anchors are like directories that can have any number of subdirectories, but at most one file.
Creating and interacting with circuit elements is the mechanism through which the user controls and reflects on their distributed application. This can be accomplished by means of the included Go client library, or using the command-line tool embodied in the circuit executable itself.
Process elements are used to execute, monitor and synchronize OS-level processes at the hosting circuit server. They allow visibility and control over OS processes from any machine in the circuit cluster, regardless of the physical location of the underlying OS process.
Channel elements are a synchronization primitive, similar to the channels in Go, whose send and receive sides are accessible from any location in the circuit cluster, while their data structure lives on the circuit server hosting their anchor.