About Stereotypes
Intent Architect's Designers enables modelling of Stereotypes which can be used to extend the vocabulary of Designer Elements.
Stereotypes allow "decoration" of elements and are analogous to decoration features in programming languages, such as C# Attributes or Java Annotations. Common use of Stereotypes is specifying technology or business domain specific metadata for Elements in the Intent Architect designer, such as a Class having a business requirement of being audited, or a Service Operation's HTTP method.
A practical example
For example, Intent Architect's standard Services Designer only allows modelling generic Services and generic Operations on them.
After installing the Intent.Metadata.WebApi module, an Http Settings Stereotype can be applied on Operations and allows specifying via which HTTP Verbs should be accessible. This Stereotype enriches the data model for the operation allowing us to describe the Http related aspects of the service operation.
The Stereotype can be located on the Properties pane located to the right of the Designer:
Stereotypes not only offer a form of "tagging" on Elements found in Intent Architect Designers, but they also allow one to capture additional information using properties. These properties can hold different data types, allowing for a richer way of specifying more information on the Element at hand.
Making your own
Stereotypes can be defined by the use of Stereotype Definitions, refer to this article for further details.