Concepts
This page explains the core concepts in Schematic—what each one is and why it exists. It’s written for anyone using or evaluating Schematic, regardless of technical background.
Features
A feature is a capability your product offers that you want to gate, meter, or track—for example, “SSO,” “Advanced Reporting,” or “API calls.”
Features are the central building block in Schematic. Every plan entitlement, usage limit, and access rule is attached to a feature.
Features come in three types:
Flags
A flag is the on/off control mechanism behind a feature. It determines who gets access, when, and under what conditions—based on targeting rules you define.
Every feature in Schematic has a corresponding flag. When your application checks whether a user or company can access a feature, the flag evaluates their plan, traits, and any overrides, then returns a yes or no.
Flags support plan-based rules (automatically on for companies on a given plan), manual targeting (on for specific customers), and trait-based conditions (on when a stored attribute meets a certain value).
Plans
A plan is the bundle of features and limits you assign to a company. Plans typically correspond to the tiers you sell—Free, Starter, Pro, Enterprise, and so on.
Each company has exactly one plan at a time. Plans are often linked to a billing product in Stripe so that plan assignment updates automatically when a subscription changes.
Add Ons
An add on is a bundle of additional features and limits that sits on top of a company’s base plan. Unlike plans, a company can have any number of add ons.
Add ons are used to sell incremental capabilities—for example, a “Premium Analytics” add on that unlocks additional features regardless of which base plan a company is on.
Entitlements
An entitlement is what a plan (or add on) grants for a specific feature. It’s the link between “what a customer is paying for” and “what they can do.”
Entitlements can grant simple on/off access, limit a feature to a stored value (like seat count), or meter it against tracked usage (like API calls per month). When a company is on multiple plans or add ons, the most permissive entitlement across all of them applies.
Companies
A company is the organization you’re tracking and billing in Schematic—typically a customer account. Companies are the primary entity that plans, entitlements, and usage are attached to.
Each company has a plan and optional add ons, entitlements derived from those plans, usage tracked over time, and a history of plan changes.
Users
A user is a person associated with a company in Schematic. Users inherit entitlements from their company’s plan, but can also have usage tracked independently—for example, per-seat consumption.
Usage
Usage is the consumption of a metered feature over time. Schematic tracks usage to enforce limits, power usage-based billing, and give you visibility into how customers are using your product.
Usage is attributed to a company, a user, and a feature, and can be viewed at any of those levels.
Subscription
A subscription is a company’s active billing relationship—their current plan (and add ons), typically synced from Stripe.
When a Stripe subscription changes (upgrade, downgrade, cancellation), Schematic automatically updates the company’s plan assignment. No webhook handlers or manual reconciliation required.
Credits
Credits are prepaid or granted units of usage—for example, API call packs, seat licenses, or time blocks. Credits are decremented as usage occurs, and companies can hold a balance that rolls over or expires.
Credits are typically used for pay-in-advance pricing models or to grant promotional access outside of a regular plan.
Catalog Configuration
Configuration is where you define the rules that govern how plans and add ons behave across your product—things like which plan new companies start on, what happens when a subscription lapses, how trials work, and which plans are available for self-serve checkout.
Keys
Keys are the identifiers your systems use to refer to a company or user in Schematic. For example, you might store a Stripe Customer ID, a Salesforce Account ID, and your own internal ID as separate keys on the same company.
Keys make it possible for multiple systems—your app, your CRM, your billing tool—to look up the same company without creating duplicates.
Traits
Traits are attributes you store on companies or users—things like seat count, industry, or renewal date.
Traits serve two purposes: they can be used as conditions in flag targeting rules (e.g., “on for companies in the healthcare industry”), and they can define the limit for trait-based entitlements (e.g., “up to however many seats a company has licensed”).
Events
Events are the signals your application sends to Schematic to create profiles and track usage. There are two types:
- Identify – creates or updates a company or user profile with their name, traits, and keys
- Track – records a usage event for a company, user, and feature
Events are the primary way data flows into Schematic from your application.
Checks
A check is a log entry created every time Schematic evaluates a flag for a company or user. Checks record the result (granted or denied) and which rule caused it—useful for understanding why a customer does or doesn’t have access to a feature.
Components
Components are prebuilt UI elements you can embed in your application to give customers self-service control over their plan—pricing tables, upgrade/downgrade flows, customer portals, and usage meters.
Components stay in sync with Schematic automatically, reflecting each company’s current entitlements and subscription in real time.
Settings
Team — Manage who has access to the Schematic app and at what permission level.
API Keys — The credentials your application and backend use to call the Schematic API.
Audit Log — A history of every API request made to Schematic, including whether it succeeded and what was sent and received. Useful for debugging.
Usage & Billing — Configuration for your own Schematic account subscription, separate from the per-customer subscription tracking described above.
