Jargon, decoded
Every confusing AI term, in one plain-English line. No buzzwords, no circular definitions.
- agent
- An AI that can take steps and use tools to finish a task — search, write a file, send a message — not just chat back at you.
- AI
- Software that learns patterns from huge amounts of text or images, then uses them to answer, write, or create. Clever pattern-matching, not a mind.
- API
- A doorway that lets two apps talk to each other. An 'API key' is your password for that doorway, so keep it private.
- ATS
- Applicant Tracking System — the software that scans and filters resumes before a human ever sees them, ranking you on keywords pulled from the job posting. You get past it by using the posting's exact words.
- chatbot
- An AI you talk to one message at a time. It answers what you ask, then waits for you. It has no job of its own and does not go off and use tools the way an agent does.
- Claude Code
- Anthropic's AI that works inside your project — it reads, writes, and runs code while you tell it what you want in plain English. A co-pilot you steer.
- CLI
- Command Line Interface — the text window where you type instructions to your computer instead of clicking. Same thing people mean by 'terminal'.
- connector
- A live link that lets Claude pull real, current data from an outside source, like market prices or company filings, instead of answering from old training memory. It is the friendly name for an MCP link.
- context window
- How much text, counted in tokens, an AI can keep in mind at one time. Fill it up and the oldest parts fall away, which is why it forgets the start of a long chat.
- deploy
- To put your code live on the internet so other people can actually use it, instead of it only running on your own computer.
- Firecrawl
- A tool that reads a website for you and hands back its content, structure, and style in a form an AI can use. Think of it as a copier for what a site looks and reads like.
- GitHub
- The website where code lives and gets versioned. It stores your project, tracks every change, and lets tools propose edits as pull requests you review before they go in.
- Glif
- A site (glif.app) full of small ready-made AI workflows for images, video, and memes. Its plugin lets an AI like Claude Code run those workflows for you. Sounds like glyph, spelled Glif.
- Google Flow
- Google's AI filmmaking tool. You give it a photo or a text prompt and its Veo video models generate short cinematic clips, so you can make moving shots without a camera or crew.
- GPT Image 2
- OpenAI's image model inside ChatGPT. You describe or upload a picture and it makes or edits one. Strong, but faces can drift between images, so you anchor them with a reference photo and firm wording.
- hallucination
- When AI states something false with total confidence. It's guessing the next likely words, so when it doesn't know, it can make things up. Always sanity-check facts.
- image-to-image
- AI that makes a new picture from photos you give it, instead of from words alone. Feed it several selfies and it keeps your face while building a whole new scene around you.
- image-to-video
- AI that takes a still picture and animates it into a short video. Your image becomes the first frame, and a text prompt tells it how things should move.
- LLM
- Large Language Model — the kind of AI behind ChatGPT and Claude. It predicts the next word over and over to produce its answers.
- MCP
- A standard plug that lets AI connect to your other apps (files, GitHub, Slack) — like a USB-C port for AI tools.
- Nano Banana
- Google's AI image tool (part of the Gemini family). You describe a picture in plain words and it makes it. The Pro version is especially good at keeping the same people and products looking identical across shots.
- Ollama
- A free app that runs AI models directly on your own computer. Install it once, type one command, and chat with a model offline, with no account and no cloud.
- open-source
- Software whose code is public for anyone to read, use, and change for free. The opposite of a locked, paid-only 'black box'.
- plugin
- A bundle you add to Claude Code in one step that can carry skills, commands, and MCP connectors together. Think of it as an app pack for your AI.
- prompt
- What you type to an AI to get a result. A clear, specific prompt gets a far better answer than a vague one.
- pull request
- A proposed set of code changes, packaged up so you can read exactly what will change and approve it before it merges into the real project. The safe way an AI hands work back.
- Qwen
- Alibaba's family of AI models. Qwen-Image is its free image generator, and it is especially good at putting accurate, readable text inside a picture. It is also open-source, so anyone can run it.
- repo
- Short for 'repository' — the folder that holds all of a project's code and its history of changes (usually on GitHub).
- Seedance
- ByteDance's AI video model. You hand it a starting image or a text description and it makes a short cinematic clip with camera moves and sound. Version 2.0 goes up to 4K.
- skill
- A folder of instructions Claude opens only when a task needs it, so a repeatable job gets done the same way every time. You teach it once, it reuses it.
- temperature
- The randomness dial on an AI. Turn it up and answers get more surprising and varied; turn it down and they get safer and more repeatable. It is why the same prompt can give a different result each time.
- terminal
- The black window where you type commands to your computer instead of clicking buttons. It's just typing instructions, nothing scary.
- token
- The little chunks of text an AI reads and counts — roughly word-pieces. They set how much it can 'remember' at once and what it costs.
- workflow
- A set sequence of steps to get something done — often automated, so each step hands off to the next without you doing it by hand.