Building with AI

Self-hosting

Running a model on your own servers or private cloud rather than calling a provider's API. It gives more control over data and costs at high volume, but you take on hardware, updates, security and monitoring, and the models you can run may be less capable.


Related terms

API (application programming interface)

A way for software to talk to other software. AI providers offer APIs so developers can send prompts and receive outpu…

API key

A secret string that identifies your account when your code calls an API, and that the bill is charged to. Treat it li…

Agent

An AI system that works towards a goal over several steps, deciding which tools to use and acting on the results with …

Agentic workflow

A process where an AI model decides some of the steps itself, rather than following a fixed sequence. It handles messy…

Batch processing

Sending many requests together to be processed in the background over a longer window, rather than waiting for each in…

Benchmark

A standard public test used to compare models, such as sets of exam questions, coding problems or maths puzzles. Usefu…

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