AI Terms Explained Simply
Short, plain answers to the AI words you keep hearing, and what each one can do for your business. Written by Hemal Shah.
Core Artificial Intelligence & Engineering Glossary
AI Agent
An AI agent is software that does a job for you, not just chats. It reads a request, decides the next step and uses your tools, like email, a spreadsheet or your CRM, to finish the task. Example: an agent that reads new enquiries, replies with prices and books a call. See AI agent development.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
RAG is an AI assistant that answers from your own documents. Before it replies, it looks up the right pages in your files (kept in a database such as Supabase pgvector) and uses them in its answer. This makes answers more accurate and much less likely to be made up.
GraphRAG
GraphRAG is RAG plus a map of how things connect. It links customers, products, suppliers and orders, so the AI can answer questions that need several facts joined together, which normal document search often misses.
n8n
n8n is a tool for connecting your apps and automating repeat work, similar to Zapier. It can run custom code, handle large amounts of data and be hosted on your own server, so you are not charged per task. Good for lead flows, reports and keeping data in sync. See automation services.
FastAPI
FastAPI is a popular Python toolkit for building the back end of an app (the part users do not see). It handles many requests at once, which suits AI features that take a few seconds to reply. See custom software.
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