Glossary
AI terms in plain English. The words I had to look up myself, explained the way I wish someone had explained them to me.
Agent
An AI that can take a goal and work toward it in steps, using tools, instead of just answering one message.
AGIArtificial General Intelligence
AI that could handle most intellectual work as well as a capable human, across the board rather than in one narrow area.
AI slop
The internet's name for low-effort, mass-produced AI content: technically fine, worth nobody's time.
Anthropic
The AI company behind Claude, known for pairing frontier models with an unusually heavy focus on safety.
APIApplication Programming Interface
A way for one piece of software to talk to another and ask it to do something.
App
Any software built for a purpose: a thing you open and use, whether on your phone, in a browser, or on your computer.
Back end
The part of a website or app that works behind the scenes: data, logic and everything users never see.
Benchmark
A standardised test used to score AI models, so they can be compared on the same tasks.
Bias
The skews an AI inherits from its training data: patterns of who and what gets represented, and how.
ChatGPT
OpenAI's chat assistant, and for most of the world, the front door to AI.
Claude
Anthropic's AI assistant, known for strong writing, careful reasoning and doing real work, not just chatting.
Claude Code
Anthropic's coding agent: an AI that lives in the terminal and builds, fixes and runs things on your computer.
CLICommand Line Interface
A way to use software by typing text commands instead of clicking buttons.
Context window
How much an AI model can hold in its head at once: your conversation, your documents, its instructions, all of it.
CopilotMicrosoft Copilot
Microsoft's AI assistant, built into Windows, Office and Teams. For many office workers, the AI they were given, not the one they chose.
Cursor
A code editor with AI built in, and one of the tools that made AI-assisted programming mainstream.
Custom GPT
Your own version of ChatGPT: same AI underneath, but loaded with your instructions, knowledge and role.
Deployment
The step where software goes live: from code on someone's computer to a real thing on the internet.
Fine-tuning
Training an existing AI model further on your own examples, so its behaviour permanently changes.
Front end
The part of a website or app that users see and interact with.
Frontier model
One of the handful of most capable AI models in the world at any given moment.
Gemini
Google's AI assistant and model family, woven into Search, Gmail, Docs and the rest of the Google world.
Generative AI
The umbrella term for AI that creates things: text, images, video, audio and code.
GEO and AEOGenerative Engine Optimization / Answer Engine Optimization
The emerging discipline of making your brand visible and correctly described in AI-generated answers.
GitHub
The place where the world's code is stored, shared and worked on together.
Guardrails
The limits and rules placed around an AI: what it may do, what it must refuse, and when a human steps in.
Hallucination
When an AI states something false with complete confidence: invented facts, sources, numbers or events.
Harness
The software built around an AI model that turns it from a chat box into something that can actually do work.
HTMLHyperText Markup Language
The language web pages are written in. Every website you have ever visited is HTML underneath.
Linear
A project management tool that software teams use to keep track of their work.
LLMLarge Language Model
The type of AI that reads and writes text, and powers tools like ChatGPT and Claude.
Lovable
A tool that turns a plain-language description into a working web app, no coding involved.
Markdown.md files
A simple way to format text using plain characters: # for headings, * for emphasis, - for lists.
MCPModel Context Protocol
A standard way to connect an AI assistant to your other tools and data, so it can do more than chat.
Midjourney
One of the best-known AI image generators, famous for making the most beautiful pictures of the early AI era.
Model
The trained AI itself: the thing that actually reads, writes, sees or reasons, underneath whatever app you are using.
Multimodal model
An AI model that works across formats: it can see images, hear audio or watch video, not just read text.
MVPMinimum Viable Product
The smallest version of a product that actually works, built to test whether anyone wants it.
NotebookLM
Google's research tool: upload your documents and get an AI that answers only from them, and can even turn them into a podcast.
Open source
Software whose code is public: anyone can inspect it, use it, change it and build on it, usually for free.
OpenAI
The AI company behind ChatGPT, and the one that made the whole world pay attention.
OpenClaw
An open-source personal AI assistant you run on your own computer, reachable through the messaging apps you already use.
Perplexity
An AI search engine: ask a question, get a written answer with sources, instead of a page of links.
PRPull Request
A proposed set of code changes, packaged up so someone can review them before they become part of the project.
Prompt
Whatever you give an AI to work with: your question, your instruction, and the material you include.
RAGRetrieval-Augmented Generation
A technique where the AI first looks things up in your documents, then answers based on what it found.
Reasoning model
An AI model that thinks before answering: it works through the problem step by step, then gives you the result.
SDKSoftware Development Kit
A ready-made toolkit that helps developers build on top of someone else's product.
System prompt
The standing instructions an AI receives before it ever sees your message, telling it who to be and how to behave.
Token
The small chunks of text an AI model reads and writes, and the unit you pay for.
Training data
Everything an AI model learned from: the text, images and other material it was shown during training.
UIUser Interface
What you actually see and touch in a product: the screens, buttons, menus and visual design.
UXUser Experience
How it feels to use a product: whether it is easy, clear and pleasant, or confusing and frustrating.
Vercel
A service that takes your website's code and puts it live on the internet.
Vibe coding
Building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting AI write the code.
Wireframe
A rough sketch of a page or app: boxes and lines showing what goes where, before any real design happens.
Workflow automation
Tools like Zapier, Make and n8n that connect your apps so tasks run themselves: when this happens, do that.
Wrapper
A product built as a thin layer on top of someone else's AI model. Usually said with a sneer.