Jargon

AI words, decoded.

Plain English, enough to hold your own at any dinner party.

Agent skillsA folder of instructions an AI loads only when it needs them, so it can learn a new job without you explaining it every time.
AgenticIt means the AI doesn't just answer you. It makes a plan, uses tools and keeps going until the job is done.
Agentic loopAn AI working in rounds: try something, check the result, adjust, and repeat until the goal is met.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)An AI that can learn and do almost any thinking job a person can, not just one narrow task. Nobody agrees exactly where the line is.

Context windowHow much an AI can keep in mind at once. Everything in the chat has to fit, and older bits fall out or get fuzzy.

Large language model (LLM)The kind of AI behind ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini: a program trained on huge amounts of text to predict what words come next.

OrchestrationOne AI acting as the manager: it splits a big job into pieces, hands them to other AIs, and puts the results together.

Prompt injectionTricking an AI by hiding instructions in something it reads, like a web page or an email, so it obeys the attacker instead of you.

Reasoning modelAn AI that thinks a problem through step by step before it answers, which makes it slower but much better at hard questions.

SandboxA walled-off space where an AI can run code and make a mess without touching anything you care about.

Universal High IncomeThe idea that once AI and robots do most of the work, everyone gets paid more than enough to live well, not just the bare minimum.

Vibe codingBuilding software by describing what you want to an AI, accepting whatever it writes, and never really reading the code.

YOLO modeLetting an AI agent act without asking your permission first. Fast, handy, and risky anywhere it can do real damage.