Glossary
AI words, plainly explained.
The terms you’ll hear when you start building with AI, explained for business owners, not engineers.
- AI agent
- An AI system that can take steps on its own to reach a goal, such as reading an email, looking something up and drafting a reply, rather than only answering one question at a time.
- AI builder
- A tool such as Lovable, Bolt or Replit that turns plain-English instructions into a working web app. You describe what you want; the builder writes the code.
- API
- A doorway that lets one piece of software talk to another. For example, your business tool can use a payment API to take payments or an AI API to write replies.
- Back end
- The behind-the-scenes part of an app: the database, logins and logic that runs on a server.
- Business tool
- A small web app that does something useful for your customer, such as a scorecard, quote calculator or course finder, and hands you the lead. It opens from a link, with no App Store needed.
- Chatbot
- A program that answers questions in a chat window. Modern chatbots use large language models, so they can answer in natural language instead of from a fixed script.
- Consent
- Under India’s DPDP Act, a person’s clear, informed and specific agreement for you to use their personal data for a stated purpose. They must be able to withdraw it as easily as they gave it.
- Context window
- How much text an AI model can consider at once, including your instructions, documents and the conversation so far.
- Data Fiduciary
- Under India’s DPDP Act, the person or business that decides why and how personal data is used. If your tool collects your customers’ details, you are the Data Fiduciary.
- Database
- Where your tool stores information, such as leads, users and answers, so it is still there tomorrow.
- Deploy
- Putting your app on the internet so others can use it from a link.
- DPDP Act
- India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. It sets the rules for collecting and using personal data, including notice, consent, security and people’s rights over their data.
- Front end
- The part of an app people see and click: the screens, buttons and forms.
- Generative AI
- AI that creates new content, such as text, images, code or audio, from instructions.
- Hallucination
- When an AI model states something false with confidence. Always check facts, numbers and legal points that AI gives you.
- Hosting
- The service that keeps your website or app online, such as Lovable, Cloudflare Pages or Vercel.
- Large language model (LLM)
- The type of AI behind ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. It is trained on large amounts of text and predicts useful responses to what you write.
- Lead
- A potential customer who has shared their contact details and a need. A business tool turns anonymous visitors into leads.
- Lead magnet
- Something useful you offer in return for a visitor’s contact details. A business tool is a lead magnet that gives an instant, personal result.
- No-code
- Building software without writing code by hand, using visual tools or AI builders.
- Prompt
- The instruction you give an AI model. Clear prompts get better results; the RAO method is a simple way to write them.
- RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
- A way to make AI answer from your own documents, such as your FAQs or policies, by finding the relevant text first and then writing the answer from it.
- RAO method
- John V Jayakumar’s prompting method: give the AI a Role, a clear Action, and the Operational context it needs (audience, rules, format and limits).
- Row-level security
- A database setting that makes sure each user can only see their own records. It is what the two-user safety test checks.
- Token
- The small pieces of text AI models read and write. AI services usually charge by the number of tokens.
- Two-user safety test
- A simple check taught in our programs: create two accounts and confirm neither can see the other’s data before real customers use your tool.
- Vibe coding
- Building software by describing what you want to an AI builder in plain language, reviewing what it makes, and refining it step by step, instead of writing code by hand.
- Web app
- An app that runs in a browser from a link, on any phone or laptop, without installing anything from an app store.
- Workflow automation
- Connecting tools so routine steps happen on their own, for example sending a WhatsApp message when a new lead arrives.
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