Reference · Glossary
The shared vocabulary of this course. Every lesson uses these words exactly this way.
| Term | Meaning | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Loop engineering | Replacing yourself as the person who prompts the agent, by designing the system that prompts it instead. | Osmani |
| Loop | A recursive goal. You define a purpose; the AI iterates until it is complete. | Osmani |
| Automation | A scheduled run that does discovery and triage by itself. The heartbeat of a loop. | Osmani |
| Worktree | A separate working directory on its own branch, sharing one repo history. Stops parallel agents colliding. | git |
| Skill | Project knowledge written down in a SKILL.md folder, so the agent reads it instead of guessing. The authoring format. | Osmani |
| Plugin | How you ship skills and connectors — bundled so a teammate installs the setup in one go. | Osmani |
| Connector | An MCP-based link from the agent to a real tool: issue tracker, database, staging API, Slack. | Osmani |
| Sub-agent | A separate agent with its own instructions and possibly its own model, so the maker is not the checker. | Osmani |
| State | The sixth piece. On-disk memory of what is done and what is next, outside any conversation. | Osmani |
| Agent harness engineering | Designing the environment a single agent runs inside. Loop engineering sits one floor above it. | Osmani |
| Factory model | The system that builds the software, as distinct from the software. | Osmani |
| Orchestration tax | Your review bandwidth, not the tool, is the real ceiling on how many agents you can run. | Osmani |
| Intent debt | What accrues when intent is unwritten: an agent starts cold and fills every hole with a confident guess. | Osmani |
| Comprehension debt | The growing gap between code that exists and code you understand. | Osmani |
| Cognitive surrender | Ceasing to hold an opinion, and taking whatever the loop returns. | Osmani |
/loop | Re-runs a prompt on a cadence. Stops when you stop it. | Claude Code / Codex |
/goal | Runs until a verifiable condition holds. A separate small model judges completion after each turn. | Claude Code / Codex |
| MCP | The protocol connectors are built on. Shared by both tools, so a connector usually ports across. | Osmani |