The job
AI employee
Software given a recurring job, business context, tools, rules, and a way to show what it completed. The phrase does not make software a legal employee.
AI agent
Software that can choose and use tools to pursue an assigned result. The useful question is which tools, which result, and which limits.
Workflow
The repeatable path from a start signal to a completed result, including exceptions and approvals.
Trigger
The event or schedule that starts a job: a new email, a meeting ending, a form arriving, or Friday at 4 p.m.
Task
A specific unit of work with a finish line, owner, and status.
Recurring job
Work that happens on a schedule or whenever the same kind of event occurs.
Information
Context
The approved facts, messages, records, and instructions needed for the current job.
Memory
Business context saved for later work inside the permitted account and scope.
System of record
The place the business treats as authoritative, such as its accounting system, CRM, or signed contract file.
Grounding
Using approved business records or sources to shape an answer instead of relying only on a model’s general training.
Retrieval
Finding relevant approved information before preparing an answer or action.
Hallucination
A confident-looking statement or detail that is unsupported or wrong.
Tools and actions
Integration
A controlled connection between the AI product and another business tool.
Permission
A right granted to read, create, change, send, share, or delete something.
OAuth
A provider sign-in method that lets you grant specific access without handing the application your password.
Tool call
A request from the AI system to use a connected function, such as creating a draft or reading a calendar.
Read action
Looking up information without changing it.
Write action
Creating, changing, sending, sharing, or deleting information.
Control and proof
Human in the loop
A person reviews or decides at a defined point in the workflow.
Approval gate
A control that pauses a covered action until an authorized person approves or rejects it.
Audit trail
A reviewable record of proposed actions, decisions, and completed work.
Evaluation
A repeatable test of whether the job is accurate, safe, useful, and complete.
Edge case
An unusual but plausible situation that exposes whether the job knows when to stop or adapt.
Escalation
Handing the work to a person because information is missing, rules conflict, or the consequence exceeds the assignment.
Incident
An event that harmed or could have harmed confidentiality, integrity, availability, customer trust, or business operations.
The model
Model
The underlying system that interprets instructions and produces text, images, audio, or decisions used by the product.
Prompt
Instructions or context sent to the model for a particular step.
Token
A unit providers use to measure model input and output. It affects cost and limits but rarely belongs in an owner’s job description.
Fine-tuning
Further training a model on selected examples. It is different from giving a product current business context or memory.
Temperature
A technical setting that affects output variation. Lower does not guarantee truth.
