Glossary

The words we use in a specializt sense, spelled out in full. If one appears in an article with a dotted underline, this is the definition.

Agentic

Of a system that does not just answer, but decides which tools to use and in what order to reach a goal. The difference with a prompt is that the path is not written by the person asking.

Where we discuss it: AI agent orchestration

CLSCumulative Layout Shift

The measure of how much the content moves while the page loads. Below 0.1 is considered good; you get there by reserving the space for images before they arrive.

CRMCustomer Relationship Management

The record of who is a customer and who might become one: contacts, deals, quotes, exchanges. It earns its place when the same information lives in three inboxes and nobody can say where a deal stands.

Deployer

Whoever uses an artificial intelligence system under their own authority, in the course of a professional activity. Not whoever builds it: whoever puts it into service. It is the role the AI Act places most of the practical obligations on.

Where we discuss it: EU AI Act, a guide for deployers

ERPEnterprise Resource Planning

The system that holds a company's administrative and operational processes together: orders, stock, purchasing, invoicing, sometimes production and people. Custom software usually grows where the standard ERP stops, not in its place.

Guardrail

A constraint that limits what an AI system can do or answer, applied before the output reaches the person who asked for it. It is not a suggestion inside the prompt: it is a check that can refuse an answer.

Where we discuss it: AI workflows and agents

LLMLarge Language Model

A language model trained on large amounts of text. It knows a lot in general and little about a private domain: that is the reason RAG exists.

Where we discuss it: Custom RAG agents with Mastra

MESManufacturing Execution System

The system that runs production while it happens: work orders, progress, machine stops, scrap. It sits between the ERP, which says what to produce, and the machines that produce it.

MRPMaterial Requirements Planning

The calculation of what is needed to produce and when to order it: materials, quantities, lead times. It is the part of the ERP that turns a production plan into a purchase list with a date on it.

Multi-tenant

An architecture where a single installation serves several customers while keeping their data separate. The alternative is one copy per customer, which costs less to design and far more to keep up to date.

Where we discuss it: Digital Factory

NDANon Disclosure Agreement

The agreement in which two parties undertake not to disclose what they tell each other. We sign it before talking about a project when the project itself is confidential.

Orchestration

The coordination of several agents, tools and steps in a flow that has a state, an order and checkpoints. You need it when a task does not fit into a single call to the model.

Where we discuss it: AI workflows and agents

PIIPersonally Identifiable Information

The data that leads back to a person: name, email, phone number, device identifiers, sometimes an IP address. Recognising it is the first step in deciding where it may live and for how long.

RAGRetrieval-Augmented Generation

An approach where the model, before answering, retrieves the relevant passages from a data source made available to it, and answers on those. It cuts down made-up answers because it ties the output to a text that exists.

Where we discuss it: Custom RAG agents with Mastra

RBACRole Based Access Control

Granting permissions by role rather than by person: what a role can do is described once, and people inherit the permissions of the role they hold. Moving somebody to another job becomes one line instead of a review of every permission.

Single-tenant

An architecture where each customer has a dedicated, standalone installation with their own data. It costs less to design but much more to update, in exchange for the highest level of customization and security.

Where we discuss it: Digital Factory

SLAService Level Agreement, guaranteed service levels

The written commitment on how the service runs: how fast a report is answered, how fast it is resolved, how much unavailability is acceptable. Without numbers it is not an agreement, it is a promise.

Slice

In the CMS, a typed content block that writers put together to build a page. Each slice matches a component in the design system: it is the point where editorial work and design meet.

WCAGWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines

The international guidelines for the accessibility of web content, organized in three conformance levels: A, AA and AAA. This site conforms to level AA and meets a good part of level AAA: the status criterion by criterion is in the accessibility statement.

Where we discuss it: Accessibility

From definitions to your project.

If one of these terms concerns a system you have to build or choose, tell us where you are starting from.

  • You won't talk to a salesperson
  • NDA before we get into the details
  • The code stays yours