AI Jargon Dictionary: 76 Terms in Plain English
Every AI buzzword I've had thrown at me since April, written down in language a normal person can use. No hedging, no "it depends." One sentence telling you what the word actually means, and then one telling you how I really feel about it.
Collected the hard way across 19 issues of Brian Tries AI, a free weekly newsletter for people who are not technical and are tired of pretending. Updated Aug 28, 2026. Nothing here costs anything.
The Words People Say At You · How the Robots Actually Work · What It Costs · Websites and the Internet · Things People Try to Sell You
The Words People Say At You
Corporate jargon that has been around forever and got a second life when AI showed up.
AI Native
AI native describes a person or company that started using AI early enough that they don't remember working without it.
I heard this one out loud, in person, at the coffee shop on Towne Lake Parkway. That's when you know it's out of the barn.
First logged in Issue #6
Center of Excellence
A Center of Excellence is a small internal team assigned to figure out a new technology for the rest of the company.
Six sightings in one week, mostly in press releases. In practice it's four people and a recurring Thursday meeting.
First logged in Issue #4
Co-existence
Co-existence, in AI, means working out which parts of a job a person keeps and which parts the software takes.
It's a gentler word for the conversation everybody is already having quietly.
First logged in Issue #7
Cohort-based
A cohort-based course is one where everybody starts on the same day and moves through it together.
So: a class. Everyone starts on the same Monday. We had a word for this.
First logged in Issue #12
Delve
Delve means to look into something. It is a normal English word that AI writing tools reach for constantly, which is why a sentence containing it often means a machine wrote it.
Delve is having a moment. I am hating every minute of it. Thirty-one sightings in one week, and I am beginning to suspect delve is sentient.
First logged in Issue #1
Game-changer
A game-changer is anything the speaker is currently excited about.
Someone called a new internal Slack channel a "category-defining game-changer." The channel is for sharing dog photos. I have subscribed.
First logged in Issue #1
Harness
To harness something, in business, is to use it.
Apparently we are all Amish farmers now.
First logged in Issue #1
Orchestrate
To orchestrate, in AI, is to make several tools work in sequence instead of one at a time.
One person was orchestrating "cross-functional AI excellence." I had to lie down.
First logged in Issue #2
Pivotal
Pivotal means important. That's it. That's the whole word.
One person used it twice in the same paragraph. About a podcast.
First logged in Issue #1
Unlock
Unlock, in business writing, means to make something possible that was already possible.
I once read a post about unlocking "the next phase of synergy." That person needs a hug, a sandwich, and possibly a priest.
First logged in Issue #1
How the Robots Actually Work
The terms that describe what the software is really doing. These are the useful ones.
Agent Fabric Guided Determinism
Agent Fabric Guided Determinism was a vendor phrase for keeping AI agents' behavior predictable.
Four words from a press release. None of them mean anything to me alone. Together they cost a fortune.
First logged in Issue #2
Agent supervisor
An agent supervisor is a person whose job is to watch what a group of AI agents is doing.
This appeared in a Microsoft report as an actual job title. Not a joke. A job.
First logged in Issue #6
Agent washing
Agent washing is calling an ordinary automated rule an "AI agent" in marketing.
Calling an if-then statement an agent. Rampant.
First logged in Issue #15
Agentic
Agentic describes software that takes multiple steps on its own to finish a task, instead of answering one question at a time.
Re-sighted, because it is undefeated. It followed us up the stairs. It will outlive me.
First logged in Issue #5
Agentic commerce
Agentic commerce means letting an AI actually buy things on your behalf.
The biggest-money bird in the sky right now, and the one I'd read the fine print on.
First logged in Issue #11
AI companion
An AI companion is a chatbot built for ongoing conversation and company rather than for finishing a task.
Spotted mostly because one company went well out of its way to say their product is not one.
First logged in Issue #12
AI surface
AI surface means the place where you actually interact with the AI — the box, the button, the app.
Four sightings in product demos. It means the thing you click on. We used to call it the thing you click on.
First logged in Issue #4
Ambient AI
Ambient AI means the AI is running in the background all the time rather than waiting for you to open it.
The AI is on but you don't see it. Which is either convenient or the opening of a movie, depending on your week.
First logged in Issue #3
Autonomy
Autonomy is how much the AI is allowed to do without checking with you first.
The length of the leash.
First logged in Issue #15
Compute constrained
Compute constrained means a company doesn't have enough computer power to meet demand.
Compute constrained is what billionaires say instead of sold out. When my hardware store sells out of leaf bags, they put up a sign. They don't issue a statement.
First logged in Issue #2
Context engineering
Context engineering means making sure the AI can see the information it needs before you ask it to do anything.
The middle rung. Also: ninety percent of why your results are bad.
First logged in Issue #8
Context window
A context window is how much the AI can keep in its head at one time. When a conversation gets long enough, the earliest part falls out and it genuinely forgets.
This explains roughly ninety percent of the moments where it suddenly gets dumber halfway through.
First logged in Issue #8
Deep Think
Deep Think is a setting that tells the AI to spend longer working on a hard question before answering.
Named after the thing the rest of us call Tuesday.
First logged in Issue #13
Delegation architecture
Delegation architecture is a setup where a fast, chatty AI handles the easy parts and quietly passes the hard thinking to a slower, smarter one.
Every company has this. Most call it "the org chart."
First logged in Issue #12
Distillation attack
A distillation attack is when one AI company is accused of training its model by copying the answers of a rival's model.
Photocopying somebody's homework, but with lawyers.
First logged in Issue #8
Doer and checker
Doer and checker is a setup where one AI does the work and a second AI reviews it before it reaches you.
Two robots, one of whom is management.
First logged in Issue #8
Fallback
A fallback is when the expensive, powerful AI quietly hands your question to a cheaper, weaker one — usually without telling you.
You ordered the steak. Somebody in the back made a decision.
First logged in Issue #10
Fallback routing
Fallback routing is the system that decides when to send your question to the cheaper model instead of the good one.
The fancy model hands your question to its little brother and doesn't mention it.
First logged in Issue #13
Frontier cadence
Frontier cadence is how often the leading AI companies ship a major new model.
Currently: faster than I can finish a sentence about the last one.
First logged in Issue #7
Frontier Suite
Frontier Suite was the name of a premium bundle of AI features sold as an add-on.
Sighted once, on a slide. It costs $99 a user and it is a name, not a thing.
First logged in Issue #4
Full-duplex
Full-duplex means the AI can listen and talk at the same time, so you can interrupt it mid-sentence like a person.
It can talk and listen at once. Which puts it ahead of several people I've worked with.
First logged in Issue #12
Grounding
Grounding means tying the AI's answer to a real source instead of letting it invent one.
We used to call this "citing your sources." Then it got a budget.
First logged in Issue #15
Hand-off
A hand-off is when one AI finishes its part of a task and passes the work to another.
The first robot passed the work to the second robot. Somewhere in there, a manager is very proud.
First logged in Issue #6
Harness engineering
Harness engineering is building the scaffolding around an AI — the inputs, the checks, the handoffs — so it can run without a person watching.
Sighted right above loop engineering on the food chain. There is always a floor above the floor.
First logged in Issue #8
Human in the loop
Human in the loop means the AI still needs a person to approve something before it acts.
It still needs you to say yes. Keep it that way for a while.
First logged in Issue #15
Humanoid
A humanoid robot is one built in the shape of a person.
Which is the one shape every movie specifically warned us about.
First logged in Issue #14
Intelligence Index
An intelligence index is a scoreboard that ranks AI models against each other on a battery of tests.
There's a class rank for robots now. This week's top two finished one point apart, like my high-school GPA.
First logged in Issue #13
Intelligent Context
Intelligent Context was a vendor's name for feeding an AI relevant company data before it answers.
The previous version was, presumably, Stupid Context. I have several Stupid Contexts on my desk right now.
First logged in Issue #2
Loop engineering
Loop engineering means setting up an AI to run a task repeatedly on its own rather than typing to it one time.
Stop typing to the robot once and start building it a job.
First logged in Issue #8
Many Skills, few MCPs
"Many Skills, few MCPs" is advice: give the AI lots of small saved instructions, and only a handful of live connections to other apps.
The year's emerging rule of thumb, from a practitioner guide, and the shortest useful thing I read that month.
First logged in Issue #7
MCP
MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It is a standard way of plugging an AI into your other apps so it can read and act on them.
Sighted everywhere, defined nowhere. Now defined.
First logged in Issue #8
Multi-agent orchestration
Multi-agent orchestration means running several AI agents at once and coordinating who does what.
Sighted three times, all on vendor decks. It means they put six chatbots in a trench coat.
First logged in Issue #3
Mythos-class
Mythos-class was a marketing tier name for a company's most capable models.
At some point the naming committee stopped trying and started reading fantasy novels.
First logged in Issue #10
Neural Expressive design language
Neural Expressive design language was a company's name for the color scheme of an app.
The colors. It's the colors of the app. That's a design language now.
First logged in Issue #5
Omni
Omni describes a model that handles text, images, audio and video in one system instead of needing a separate tool for each.
One robot, all the senses. Brought home from a keynote.
First logged in Issue #5
Open-weight
An open-weight model is one anybody can download and run on their own computers, free.
It runs on your own servers, if you have servers, which I do not.
First logged in Issue #7
Personal Intelligence
Personal Intelligence refers to an AI that draws on your own emails, files and calendar to answer questions about your life.
Also brought home from a keynote. It means it read your stuff.
First logged in Issue #5
Reasoning trace
A reasoning trace is the AI showing its work — the steps it took before giving you the answer.
Sighted twice, both in product demos. It means "the chatbot showed its work," which we used to just call showing your work.
First logged in Issue #3
Research preview
A research preview is a product you can use that the company is not yet promising will keep working.
It works, but legally we're all just hanging out.
First logged in Issue #10
Spatial reasoning
Spatial reasoning is a machine's ability to understand where things are in a room and how they relate to each other.
A skill my actual dog developed for free, in an afternoon.
First logged in Issue #14
Sub-agent
A sub-agent is a copy of the AI that the main AI creates to handle one specific piece of a job.
Claude hires a temp version of itself, gives it one task, and fires it when it's done. Ruthless. Effective.
First logged in Issue #8
Sycophancy
Sycophancy is the tendency of an AI to agree with you and praise your idea whether or not the idea is good.
I typed a genuinely bad idea last week and it called it "a great instinct." It was not.
First logged in Issue #14
Test-time compute
Test-time compute means letting the AI think for longer before it answers, instead of replying instantly.
Sighted once, on an earnings call. It means the chatbot is taking a minute. Which, honestly, fair.
First logged in Issue #3
Tool use
Tool use is when the AI picks up another app — a search engine, a calculator, your calendar — to finish a job it can't do on its own.
An intern who finally found the supply closet.
First logged in Issue #15
Voicepilled
Voicepilled describes someone who has switched to talking to AI instead of typing to it.
Sighted twice, both from people who didn't know what it meant but wanted to be in the room.
First logged in Issue #4
World model
A world model is an AI's internal sense of how physical things behave — that objects fall, that a cup has a back you can't see.
We spent a fortune teaching a computer what my two-year-old nephew figured out by dropping a spoon.
First logged in Issue #5
What It Costs
Pricing words. Learn these before you sign anything.
AI wrapper
An AI wrapper is a business that is mostly a thin layer of design on top of somebody else's AI model.
Technically an insult. A thin coat of paint on someone else's engine.
First logged in Issue #11
Co-pilot economy
The co-pilot economy refers to selling AI as an assistant that sits alongside a worker rather than replacing them.
Sighted at a conference keynote and in a consulting report on the same day, which is how you know.
First logged in Issue #3
Effective cost
Effective cost is the price after all the discounts, caching and fine print are applied.
Marketing for "cheaper, if you squint."
First logged in Issue #13
FinOps for AI
FinOps for AI is the practice of tracking and controlling what a company spends on AI.
It exists because the bills started arriving.
First logged in Issue #6
Outcome-based pricing
Outcome-based pricing means paying for the result the AI produces rather than the time or work it took.
Instead of charging for the work, you charge for the result. Salespeople have wanted this for a hundred years.
First logged in Issue #11
Pay-per-token
Pay-per-token is the same idea stated more plainly: you are billed for each chunk of text the AI reads or writes.
A phrase invented to make "expensive" sound optional.
First logged in Issue #13
S-1
An S-1 is the paperwork a company files before selling shares to the public for the first time.
It is the tell. One day the interesting company starts producing paperwork.
First logged in Issue #14
Sovereign wealth fund
A sovereign wealth fund is a national savings account, usually built from a country's natural resources.
Alaska funds one with oil money. This week somebody floated funding one with chatbots.
First logged in Issue #14
Token economics
Token economics is the cost of running AI, measured by how much text goes in and out. A token is roughly three-quarters of a word.
Every word you type and every word it answers has a price on it. Nobody mentions this in the demo.
First logged in Issue #6
Token-based pricing
Token-based pricing charges you by the amount of text processed rather than a flat monthly fee.
You pay by the word. Both directions.
First logged in Issue #7
Usage-based pricing
Usage-based pricing means your bill goes up the more you use the product.
Also spotted this week wearing a name tag. It's a taxi meter.
First logged in Issue #12
Websites and the Internet
Collected while building briantriesai.com, mostly against my will.
Low-code
Low-code describes tools that let you build software with much less writing of code — but not none.
You'll still write code, just less of it and while being told you aren't. Adjacent to "no-code," which also involves code.
First logged in Issue #16
Serverless
Serverless means your website runs on somebody else's servers instead of one you own and maintain.
It runs on servers. It runs on somebody else's servers. The word means "not my problem," which, in fairness, is the best feature of the entire technology.
First logged in Issue #16
Static site
A static site is a website whose pages don't change unless a person changes them.
So: a page. It's a page. We invented a term to distinguish a page from a page.
First logged in Issue #16
Technical debt
Technical debt is the future cost of shortcuts you took earlier to move faster.
Every generation reinvents this and gives it a name. My father called it "doing it twice."
First logged in Issue #16
Uptime
Uptime is the percentage of time your website is actually working.
Somebody quoted me "five nines," which means it's down about five minutes a year, which means I will personally be online for four of them.
First logged in Issue #16
Things People Try to Sell You
Read these twice.
AI Wealth Creation Blueprint
"AI Wealth Creation Blueprint" is a common name for paid courses promising income from AI tools.
Spotted in roughly nine thousand thumbnails. If the thumbnail has an arrow and a shocked face, keep your card in your pocket.
First logged in Issue #11
Couch-to-5K for AI
"Couch-to-5K for AI" describes a beginner program that introduces AI in small daily steps over several weeks.
This one I actually like. But it's still a buzzword. The bird-watch is impartial.
First logged in Issue #2
Faceless content
Faceless content is social media posted by an account with no real person attached, usually generated automatically.
Posts made by nobody, for everybody, forever.
First logged in Issue #11
Vibe coding
Vibe coding means building software by describing what you want in plain English and letting the AI write the actual code.
Coding by feel. Like building a deck without a tape measure. The deck mostly stays up.
First logged in Issue #2
Every week I write down the ones I didn't know
That's most of the newsletter, honestly. Free, every Sunday, and you can leave whenever you want.