Vocab Sheet

Speak the Language of AI

The terms you need — tiered by where you are in your journey. Start at the top. Work your way down.

01 Core Vocabulary 02 Your Toolbox 03 The Plumbing
Tier 01

Core Vocabulary

The landscape. Enough to hold any conversation about AI.

AI / Artificial Intelligence
Machines performing tasks that normally require human intelligence — reasoning, writing, seeing, deciding.
ML / Machine Learning
How AI learns by finding patterns in data rather than being hand-coded step-by-step.
LLM / Large Language Model
An AI trained on massive amounts of text to understand and generate human language. ChatGPT is built on one.
GPT
"Generative Pre-trained Transformer" — the family of models powering ChatGPT. GPT-4, GPT-5, etc.
Model
The actual AI "brain" that takes your input and produces a response. Different models have different strengths.
Prompt
What you type to the AI. The instructions, questions, or context you give it to get a response.
Token
The building block of AI text — roughly ¾ of a word. AI reads and writes in tokens, not words.
Context Window
How much the AI can "remember" in a single conversation. Bigger window = longer memory.
Hallucination
When AI confidently makes something up that isn't true. Always verify important facts.
Agent
AI that doesn't just respond — it takes actions for you. Browses the web, writes files, runs tools.
Chatbot
A conversational AI interface. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are chatbots built on LLMs.
Training Data
The text, images, and examples the AI learned from before it ever met you.
Tier 02

Your Toolbox

The platforms and workspace you'll actually use day-to-day.

ChatGPT
OpenAI's flagship assistant. The best all-rounder with the deepest ecosystem.
Best forEveryday tasks, brainstorming, and all-purpose AI work
Claude
Anthropic's AI. Excels at writing, analysis, and long documents.
Best forLong-form writing, deep analysis, and coding
Gemini
Google's AI. Native to Gmail, Drive, and Docs — lives inside your Google workspace.
Best forAnything inside Google — Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets
Grok
xAI's model. Real-time data from X (Twitter) and fewer guardrails.
Best forReal-time news, trends, and unfiltered takes from X
Perplexity
An AI search engine. Answers questions by scanning the live web and citing its sources.
Best forWeb searching, research, and scraping info from live sites
Nano Banana
Google's viral image-editing model inside Gemini. Edit a photo by describing the change.
Best forImage creation, editing, and photo processing
Higgsfield
AI video generation. Turn a photo or prompt into a cinematic clip.
Best forGenerating short videos, motion shots, and b-roll
IDE / Integrated Dev Environment
The editor where code and AI live together. Zed is the one we use.
CLI / Command Line Interface
Typing commands directly to your computer. Claude Code runs here. Less scary than it looks.
Project
A persistent workspace in ChatGPT or Claude that remembers context across every chat inside it.
Master Prompt
A seeded, high-quality prompt that sets the stage for every conversation in a Project.
Plan Mode
ChatGPT's "architect first, execute second" mode. Write the plan, review it, then run it.
System Prompt
The hidden instructions shaping how the AI behaves before you say anything.
Tier 03

The Plumbing

How it all connects underneath. The builder's layer.

API / App Programming Interface
How software talks to software. The outlet AI plugs into.
MCP / Model Context Protocol
The USB-C of AI — one standard for any AI to talk to any tool.
n8n
Drag-and-drop automation platform for wiring AI into the rest of your stack.
Antigravity
Google's new AI-native coding IDE. Fast, smart, and built around AI pair-programming.
Automation
Chained actions that run without you — AI + triggers + tools working together.
Webhook
A real-time notification from one app to another: "hey, something just happened."
Integration
A connection between two apps so they share data automatically.
RAG / Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Giving AI access to your documents so its answers stay grounded in your data.
Embedding
Turning text into numbers so AI can measure how similar two ideas are.
Fine-tuning
Extra training on your data to turn a general AI into a specialized one.

This is just the vocabulary. The course teaches you to use it.

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