🧸 The 10 AI Words Worth Knowing (In Normal English)

Jargon is a bouncer. It stands at the door of every AI conversation going “sorry, do you know what a token is?” and half of us quietly decide we’ll come back another night. Which is maddening, because behind the bouncer there’s nothing complicated going on at all.

Here’s the secret the jargon is guarding: the whole vocabulary you actually need is ten words, and at least three of them describe things you’ve already done without knowing they had names. Everything else you’ll ever hear - the acronyms, the Silicon Valley poetry, the LinkedIn philosophising - is decoration on top of these ten.

So here they are, explained the way I’d explain them to a friend at the pub, two drinks in, no whiteboard. Each one comes with a “when you’ll hear it” so you can spot it in the wild.

The Pub Ten

1. Prompt

The message you type. That’s it, that’s the word. Ordering at the bar is a prompt. “Two crisps and whatever she’s having” is a prompt. There is an entire industry of people making this sound like wizardry, and I need you to know that every single time you’ve texted anyone a question, you were writing prompts. You’ve been doing this for years.

When you’ll hear it: “you just need better prompts”, “here’s a prompt to steal”, and the slightly grander “prompt engineering”, which mostly means “asking clearly, with detail”.

2. Model

The particular brain answering you. Claude is a model. ChatGPT runs on models. Gemini’s a model. Think of them as different chefs: all can cook, each has a signature style, and once you find the one whose food you like, you stop caring about the others. Each chef also has a few versions of themselves - a fast weeknight version, a slower special-occasion version - which is what that little picker at the bottom of the chat is about. The default is right for almost everyone.

When you’ll hear it: “which model are you using?”, “the new model just came out”, and headlines panicking about whichever model launched that week.

3. Memory

The notebook your AI keeps about you between conversations. With memory on, Claude remembers your name, your work, the project you mentioned last Tuesday. With it off, every chat starts with total amnesia, like a lovely barman who greets you as a stranger every single night. It’s free in Claude - Settings, then Capabilities - and you can ask “what do you remember about me?” any time, and tell it to forget things.

When you’ll hear it: “how does it just know that?” - said by someone whose memory is on, to someone whose memory is off.

4. Context

Everything the AI can see right now, in this conversation - your messages, its replies, anything you’ve pasted in. Picture everything laid out on the pub table between you. On the table: it can use it. Never made it to the table: it cannot, and no amount of “you know what I mean” will help, because it genuinely doesn’t. Half of all disappointing AI answers are just missing context - the machine equivalent of asking a stranger “should I take the job?” without mentioning the job.

When you’ll hear it: “give it more context” - which is expert-speak for “tell it the stuff you’d tell a friend before asking their advice”.

5. Token

The little chunks AI reads and writes text in - roughly syllables, technically “bits of words”. You’ll mostly never think about them, but they explain two mysteries: why answers appear word by word like a very confident typist (it’s generating token by token), and why extremely long conversations eventually get creaky (the table from word four is only so big). That’s honestly the whole reason to know the word: so it can’t be used to intimidate you.

When you’ll hear it: pricing pages, techy YouTube, and that one bloke at a barbecue who says “it’s all just predicting the next token” and waits for applause.

6. Hallucination

When AI states something false with total confidence. Not lying - it has no idea it’s wrong. It’s your mate who answers every pub-quiz question instantly, with conviction, in the same tone whether they know it or not. Brilliant teammate, but you double-check before you write their answer down. Same here: anything important - dates, prices, laws, medical stuff, quotes - gets a quick verify before you act on it.

When you’ll hear it: every news story about AI getting something embarrassingly wrong, and every sensible person’s reason for checking the important stuff.

7. Custom instructions

Your standing order. Tell the AI once - who you are, what you do, how you like your answers - and it applies to every conversation forever, so you stop repeating “keep it short, no jargon, British English” like a broken record. Two minutes in Settings, under Profile. Pound for pound the best two minutes in AI.

When you’ll hear it: “have you set up your custom instructions?” - the AI equivalent of “have you tried turning it off and on again”, except it actually changes everything.

8. Project

A folder for one area of your life, with its own instructions and files that every chat inside it automatically knows about. A “My Business” project holds your prices and your tone of voice; a “House Move” project holds the solicitor saga. It’s the difference between a regular at the pub and someone explaining their whole life story from scratch every visit.

When you’ll hear it: “set up a project for that” - the standard advice once you’re using AI for the same topic more than twice a week.

9. Artifact

When Claude stops just chatting and opens a side panel to build something - a proper document, a checklist, a little webpage, a working tool. The word is unnecessarily grand for what it is, which is “the thing Claude made you, in its own window, ready to use”. First time it happens it feels like asking someone the time and being handed a small wooden clock they made while you waited.

When you’ll hear it: “Claude built it as an artifact” - and in my case, “I built my whole website with these”.

10. Agent

An AI that doesn’t just answer - it does. Give it a goal and it works through the steps itself: researching, comparing, drafting, checking its own work, coming back when it’s finished. A chatbot is phone-a-friend; an agent is more like a keen temp you can brief and leave to it. This is the word behind most “AI in 2026” headlines, and also the word most abused by people selling things, so a healthy raised eyebrow is appropriate.

When you’ll hear it: “agents are the future”, approximately everywhere, said with varying levels of understanding.

The pocket glossary

Here’s the whole thing squished into one block. Paste it into your notes app, or send it to the family group chat and become the official translator.

Nick this one (save it in your notes app):

MY POCKET AI GLOSSARY
Prompt - the message I type. Nothing fancier than that.
Model - which AI brain is answering (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini...). Pick one, ignore the rest.
Memory - its notebook about me between chats. Turn it on. Ask it what it remembers.
Context - what it can see in this conversation. Bad answers usually mean I left something off the table.
Token - the word-chunks it reads and writes in. Explains the typing effect. Otherwise ignorable.
Hallucination - confident nonsense. Double-check anything that matters before acting on it.
Custom instructions - my standing order: who I am, how to answer me. Set once in Settings.
Project - a folder for one topic with its own briefing and files. Use one per big area of life.
Artifact - the side panel where Claude builds an actual thing, not just a reply.
Agent - AI that takes the steps itself instead of just advising. Big word of the moment.

Honesty corner

Ten words won’t make you sound like a machine-learning researcher, and thank goodness for that. You’ll still meet acronym soup in the wild - LLM, GPT, AGI, fine-tuning - and people who deploy it at volume. The trick is knowing that almost all of it maps back to these ten, or to nothing much at all. (When you want the fuller dictionary, including the “words people use to sound clever” section, that’s Every AI Word That’s Been Confusing You, Explained.)

Also: knowing the words isn’t the same as using the tool, in the same way that knowing “simmer” isn’t dinner. Vocabulary buys you confidence; typing buys you results.

Short on time? Do this bit

Learn context. It’s the one that changes how you use AI today: before you ask anything, spend one extra sentence putting the background on the table. That single habit outperforms every fancy technique with a fancier name.

Right, that’s the bouncer dealt with… in you go. If you’ve not done your setup yet, Your First 30 Minutes With Claude AI will have you using half these words by accident within the hour. ✨