Glossary

PLAINENGLISH

The AI and automation words that get used loosely, defined the way we actually mean them. No marketing definitions.

Definitions

12 terms, defined honestly.

These are industry definitions, not descriptions of what we sell. Where a vaguer definition would have flattered us, we kept the accurate one.

AI agent
AI automation
Workflow automation
RPA (robotic process automation)
LLM (large language model)
Integration
API
Webhook
Chatbot
Human in the loop
AIO (AI optimization)
Structured data

AI agent

An AI agent is software that is given a goal, allowed to take real actions in other systems to reach it, and left to work out the steps itself.

What separates an agent from a chatbot is permission to act, not intelligence. An agent can read the calendar, write the appointment and update the record; a chatbot can only describe how to do those things. The useful question about any agent is not how clever it is, but what it is allowed to do and what happens when it is unsure.

What is an AI agent? →

AI automation

AI automation is software that carries out repetitive work a person would otherwise do by hand, and that can cope when the work is not identical every time.

The second half is the whole distinction. Ordinary automation follows fixed rules and breaks when the input changes shape; AI automation can read a message that follows no template, pull the four figures out of a document laid out differently every time, and act sensibly on something it has not seen before.

What is AI automation? →

Workflow automation

Workflow automation is a sequence of steps you defined in advance, run automatically whenever a trigger fires.

When a form is submitted, create the record, send the confirmation, notify the right person, set a reminder. It is fast, cheap to run and completely literal — which is its strength and its limit. It does exactly what it was told, including when that is the wrong thing.

AI automation vs traditional automation →

RPA (robotic process automation)

RPA is software that operates other applications the way a person would — clicking buttons and typing into fields — usually because those applications offer no other way in.

It is a workaround, and a brittle one: because it depends on the screen staying the same, a vendor redesigning a page can break it overnight. Where a proper connection is available it is almost always the better choice. RPA earns its place with older systems that have no API at all.

LLM (large language model)

A large language model is the component that reads and writes text — the part of an AI system that understands what a message means and produces a sensible reply.

It is one piece of a working system, not the whole thing. On its own a model can only produce text; it becomes useful to a business when connected to real data and given permission to act. It is also probabilistic, meaning it is right most of the time rather than always, which is why anything expensive to get wrong keeps a person in the loop.

Integration

An integration is a working connection between two pieces of software that lets them share information without anyone retyping it.

Most of the value in automation is here rather than in the AI. What is possible depends entirely on what each product allows — two tools that both claim to integrate may still not expose the specific thing you need, and plan tier often decides it. Worth checking against the actual account before anyone promises it.

API

An API is the documented set of instructions a piece of software publishes so that other software can read from it and write to it.

If a product has a good API, connecting it is ordinary work. If it does not, the options get worse quickly — file exports, scheduled syncs, or RPA. "Does it have an API, and does it cover what we need?" is usually the question that decides how hard an automation project will be.

Webhook

A webhook is a message one system sends the moment something happens, so another system can react immediately instead of checking repeatedly.

It is the difference between being told and having to keep asking. A new form submission that fires a webhook can be answered in seconds; the same submission discovered by a check that runs every fifteen minutes is, on average, seven minutes late. For anything where response time is the point, this distinction is the whole game.

Chatbot

A chatbot is software that answers questions in a conversation but cannot take action in your systems.

It can tell a customer your opening hours. It cannot check the calendar, book the slot and send the confirmation. That is not a criticism — if your problem is genuinely that people ask the same questions all day, a chatbot may be enough and it is cheaper. It is the wrong tool when the bottleneck is the doing rather than the answering.

AI agents vs chatbots →

Human in the loop

Human in the loop means the software does the work but a person reviews or approves it before anything irreversible happens.

It is the practical answer to "is this safe?" A well-built system has a short list of things it may do alone, a shorter list it must never do without a person, and a clear rule for what happens when it is unsure. Pricing, promises to clients, and anything with a legal or financial consequence belong on the second list.

AIO (AI optimization)

AIO is the practice of making a business findable and quotable by AI answer engines, in the same way SEO makes it findable by search engines.

People increasingly ask an assistant rather than typing a query and scanning results, and those assistants cite a small number of sources. Being one of them depends on things SEO does not fully cover: content that answers a question directly in its first sentence, structured data a machine can parse, and claims corroborated somewhere other than your own website.

AIO + SEO optimization →

Structured data

Structured data is machine-readable information added to a web page that states plainly what the page is about, so software does not have to infer it from the wording.

It is how a page says "this is a business, here is its service area" or "this is a question and this is its answer" in a form search engines and AI systems read directly. It does not change what a visitor sees. It does change how reliably a machine understands the page — which matters a great deal more than it used to.

Next Step

What could you stop doing by hand?

A free consultation — we'll look at where your team's time actually goes and show you exactly what we'd automate first. No pressure, no jargon.

See What We’d Automate First →

Free consultation · a reply within one business day · no pressure, no jargon