Glossary
Understand what the AI writes for you
The words that fly past in a generated diff — webhook, migration, SSR, RAG, env var — explained in plain language, with why each one matters when you build with AI.
52 terms
AI
Context window
The maximum amount of text (measured in tokens) a model can consider in one call.
Embedding
A list of numbers that captures the meaning of text (or an image) so machines can compare it.
Fine-tuning
Further training a base model on your own examples to specialize its behavior.
Inference
Running a trained model to get an output — the actual 'thinking' step you pay for.
LLM
A large language model — AI trained on massive text to predict and generate language.
Prompt
The input you give an LLM — the instructions, context, and data it responds to.
RAG
Retrieval-Augmented Generation — feeding an LLM relevant documents at query time so it answers from your data.
System prompt
The top-level instructions that set an LLM's role, rules, and behavior for the whole session.
Token
The unit an LLM reads and writes in — a chunk of text, roughly three-quarters of a word.
Build tooling
Config / Security
Correctness
Data
Database
The organized store where your app keeps data that has to survive.
Migration
A versioned, repeatable change to your database structure.
ORM
A translation layer that lets you read and write the database using normal code instead of raw SQL.
Schema
The blueprint that defines what your data looks like — the tables, columns, and types.
Vector database
A database built to store embeddings and find the most similar ones fast.
Frontend
Component
A reusable, self-contained piece of UI you build once and drop in wherever you need it.
Hook
A special function that lets a component tap into features like state, effects, and data fetching.
Props
The inputs you pass into a component to configure how it renders.
State
The data a component remembers, which makes the UI re-render whenever it changes.
Infrastructure
CDN
A global network of servers that caches your files close to users so they load fast.
Cold start
The delay when a serverless function has to boot up from scratch before handling a request.
Edge function
Code that runs on CDN servers near the user instead of in one central region.
Serverless
You write functions and the cloud runs them on demand — no servers to provision or keep running.
Performance
Rendering
CSR
The server sends a near-empty HTML shell and JavaScript builds the whole page in the browser.
Hydration
The browser attaches interactivity to server-rendered HTML so buttons and forms actually work.
SSG
Pages are rendered once at build time into plain HTML files, then served as-is to everyone.
SSR
The server builds the full HTML for a page on each request and sends it ready to display.
Security
Security / Auth
Authentication
Proving a user really is who they claim to be before letting them in.
JWT
A signed, self-contained token that proves who a user is on each request without the server looking anything up.
OAuth
A standard that lets users log in through another service ('Sign in with Google') without handing you their password.
Session
The server's running memory that a particular user is currently logged in.
Security / Config
Version control
Web / Security
Web basics
API
A defined way for one piece of software to ask another to do something.
DNS
The internet's phone book that turns a domain name into a server address.
Endpoint
A single URL you hit to do one specific thing in an API.
GraphQL
An API style where the client asks for exactly the data it wants in one request.
REST
The most common convention for structuring web APIs around URLs and HTTP verbs.
SDK
A prewritten code library that wraps an API so you call functions instead of raw HTTP.
Webhook
A reverse API call — an external service pushes data to your app when an event happens.
Keep exploring
More of the library
- 383tools→Tools
Every tool, with an honest take on each.
- 8stacks→Stacks
Tool combinations that work together.
- 10showdowns→Comparisons
Honest head-to-heads with a verdict.
- 22recipes→Recipes
How to build the thing you keep needing.
- 12guides→Guides
The craft of building with AI.
- 6paths→Learning paths
An ordered route through the library.
- 40prompts→Prompts
Reusable prompts worth stealing.
- 10ideas→Build ideas
Project blueprints with a stack to match.
- 10notes→What's new
The shifts worth knowing about.