API (application programming interface)
A way for software to talk to other software. AI providers offer APIs so developers can send prompts and receive outputs from their own code, usually charged per token and with different data terms from the consumer chat app.
Related terms
A secret string that identifies your account when your code calls an API, and that the bill is charged to. Treat it li…
AgentAn AI system that works towards a goal over several steps, deciding which tools to use and acting on the results with …
Agentic workflowA process where an AI model decides some of the steps itself, rather than following a fixed sequence. It handles messy…
Batch processingSending many requests together to be processed in the background over a longer window, rather than waiting for each in…
BenchmarkA standard public test used to compare models, such as sets of exam questions, coding problems or maths puzzles. Usefu…
Benchmark contaminationWhen benchmark questions or answers have leaked into a model's training data, so a high score partly reflects memory r…
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