Glossary: the words, in plain English

Skim the first section now. Leave the later section until a word comes up.

Words you need now

Agent An AI you chat with that can also do useful work when you give it access and clear instructions. For this guide, think of it as a careful assistant, not a magic employee.

Brief The clear instructions you give before work starts: what you want, who it's for, what good looks like, and what must not happen.

Connector A safe link between your AI tool and another account, such as email, calendar or files. Start read-only, check permissions, and remove anything you don't use.

Context Everything the AI can see right now: your message, the chat so far, files, pasted notes and connected sources. Better context usually means better output.

Draft, confirm, execute The core safety habit. The AI drafts, you check, then you choose whether anything is sent, saved, booked or changed.

Guardrail A rule that keeps the AI inside safe lines, such as "never send without showing me first" or "do not invent prices".

Hallucination The AI improvising a confident answer that is wrong. Check names, numbers, dates and facts before anything leaves your hands.

Least access The smallest permission set that still gets the job done. If read-only is enough, don't grant write access.

Memory Saved facts and preferences the AI can use in later chats, such as your tone, business name or preferred format.

Prompt What you type to the AI. A clear prompt gets a clearer answer.

Read-only vs read and write Read-only lets the AI look but not change. Read and write lets it act. Start read-only unless you have a strong reason not to.

Session One continuous chat. If a session gets messy or long, ask for a handover note and start fresh.

Skill A saved repeatable workflow. Instead of re-explaining a weekly report or inbox triage every time, you keep the steps and reuse them.

Triage Sorting a pile into buckets so you know what needs action, what is information only and what can wait.

Words you might hear later

Agent harness or multi-agent system A setup where several agents work together, with one leading and others doing specific pieces. Useful for bigger builds, not needed for the everyday wins.

Automation tool A service that connects several apps and runs a recipe. Useful later when work needs to hop across systems or run on a schedule.

Coding agent A specialist AI tool that can build or edit software. Handy later for custom tools, not required for this guide.

Connector standard A shared way for tools to expose safe actions to AI. You don't need to know the protocol to use the habit: trust the source, check permissions, start small.

Context window How much the AI can hold in one chat before older material starts to fall away. If it forgets or drifts, start a fresh session with a handover note.

Context drift When a long chat slowly gets worse because old instructions and side paths pile up. Starting clean is usually faster than arguing with it.

Dashboard or cockpit One calm page that holds your priorities, live work, blockers and parked items. Build it manually first, then connect read-only, then schedule a brief if it earns trust.

Handover note A short summary the AI writes so you can move a job into a fresh session without losing the thread.

Large language model The kind of trained system behind most chat tools. You don't need the theory to use it well.

Local model An AI that runs on your own machine instead of a hosted service. Useful for some private work, but often less convenient.

Model The engine doing the thinking. Different models have different strengths, costs and speeds.

Orchestrator A lead agent that breaks a bigger job into pieces and pulls results together.

Permissions The exact abilities you grant when connecting a tool, such as read email or create calendar event. Read the list before approving.

Prompt injection A malicious or accidental instruction inside content the AI is reading, such as an email that tries to make it leak data. This is why connected work stays draft-confirm-execute.

Scheduled task or morning brief A recurring job that drafts an update at a set time. Use it only after the manual and read-only versions are useful.

Workplace-controlled AI setup A company-managed setup where sensitive data stays inside approved systems. If you handle regulated or confidential work, ask for this path.

Standing instructions Rules the AI reads before every chat, such as your tone, format and safety defaults.

Sub-agent A helper agent given one part of a bigger job by a lead agent.