AI glossary / How it works
Agent harness
The software wrapped around a model that lets it act as an agent. It manages the to-do list, the tools, the memory and the permissions.
Think of it as: The model is the engine. The harness is the rest of the car.
More words in How it works
- AttentionThe trick inside modern AI that lets it weigh which words in a sentence matter most to each other, so it keeps track of meaning.
- BackpropagationThe way a neural network learns from its mistakes: it works out how wrong it was, then nudges its internal dials to be less wrong next time.
- Chain of thoughtWhen an AI works through a problem step by step before giving its answer, which usually makes it more accurate.
- ClassificationSorting things into categories, such as spam or not spam. One of the most common jobs AI does.
- Context compactionSummarising the older parts of a long conversation so an AI can keep going without running out of room.