- Large language model (LLM)
- The engine behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot. It predicts the next most likely words based on everything it has read. It is not a database and it is not looking things up unless you give it something to read.
- Prompt
- What you type in. The single biggest lever you have over the quality of the output. Most bad results are bad prompts, not bad models.
- Context window
- How much the model can 'hold in its head' at once: your instructions, the document you pasted, and the back-and-forth so far. Big jobs can overflow it, which is when a model starts forgetting what you told it earlier. Do not push a model to the limits of its context window. The model will produce the best results before hitting 50% of its capacity. After that point, the model may stop following instructions or lose context.
- Token
- The unit models read and write in, roughly three-quarters of a word. You will see it in pricing and limits. You rarely need to think about it beyond 'very long inputs cost more and can crowd the context window.'
- Hallucination
- When the model states something false with total confidence: a made-up citation, a wrong number, or a policy that does not exist. This is the single most important word in this booklet. Assume it can happen every time.
- Grounding
- Giving the model the real source material to work from, such as your actual policy or your actual data, instead of letting it guess from memory. Grounding is your best defense against hallucination.
- RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
- A fancy term for grounding done automatically: the tool retrieves the right document first, then answers from it. This is how a policy chatbot answers from your handbook and not the internet.
- Agent
- An AI that can take steps, not just answer: fill a form, send a draft, or move data between tools. More power, more need for oversight.
- Guardrails
- The limits you put around a tool so it behaves: what it is allowed to do, what it must refuse, and what it must never touch, such as PII.
- PII / confidential data
- Personally identifiable information, including names, salaries, SSNs, and health details, and anything your company treats as confidential. The thing you have to think hardest about before you paste.
- Generative AI
- AI that creates new content, including text, images, audio, and code, rather than just sorting or scoring what already exists. Everything you build today sits on top of it.
- Bias
- Systematic skew in an AI's output that reflects patterns in its training data. It matters most the moment a tool touches a decision about a person, which is why it gets its own line in the checklists later.
- Model vs. app
- ChatGPT is a model you talk to. Lovable is a builder you use to create your own app that other people use. Today you will use both and you will see how there is a difference between using AI and building with it.
- Dependency
- Anything you wait on to get your work done. Naming your dependencies out loud is step one of removing them.
- The execution gap
- The distance between what your team knows needs doing and its actual capacity to do it. AI does not close that gap by making you smarter. It closes it by removing dependencies so knowing turns into doing.
- API
- A defined way for software systems to communicate with one another and request data or actions.
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)
- A standard way for an AI model to connect with external tools and sources so it can use context and perform actions through them.