For Mountain Lion, how does Apple define the Transparent App Lifecycle (TAL)?
Lion

Carbon Framework Release Notes (2011-04-11, three months before the OS was released) placed three things under Transparent App Lifecycle in relation to a seed of the OS:


persistent state
sudden termination
automatic termination.


Mountain Lion

In Mac App Programming Guide: The Core App Design (2012-07-23, two days before the OS was released) the app life cycle is: 


  … the progress of an app from its launch through its termination. …


then automatic and sudden termination are: 


  … techniques that make the termination of an app transparent …


(Unsurprisingly, no mention of Carbon in that guide.) 



Summary

Maybe the 2010 man page for talagent, in both Lion and Mountain Lion, uses an expression (Transparent App Lifecycle) that was outdated before Lion was released.