lAItest / AI field guide · edition 2026-09-26
Know the language. Build with clarity.
Plain-English definitions for the concepts, patterns, protocols, and tools behind modern AI work.
414 defined terms · 16 topic areas · 50 essentials
Goals, specs & plans terms
23 matching terms.
- Plan Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A proposed strategy and sequence for executing the work.
- Spec-driven development Pattern · Goals, specs & plans
A workflow in which explicit specifications guide design, implementation, and verification.
- Specification Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A precise description of required behavior, interfaces, or properties.
- Acceptance criteria Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Concrete conditions used to accept or reject a feature or deliverable.
- ADR Concept · Goals, specs & plans
An architecture decision record documenting a decision, context, alternatives, and consequences.
- Constitution Concept · Goals, specs & plans
In Spec Kit, persistent project principles that guide downstream development artifacts.
- Constraint Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A restriction on permissible behavior or solutions.
- Definition of done Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A team's completion contract, including checks such as tests, documentation, review, and release readiness.
- Design by contract Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Specify preconditions, postconditions, and invariants at software boundaries.
- EARS Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax: structured sentence patterns for stating requirements.
- Executable specification Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Requirements expressed through runnable examples or machine-checkable properties.
- Functional requirements Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Requirements describing what a system must do.
- Goal Concept · Goals, specs & plans
The outcome the system or agent is trying to achieve.
- Invariant Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A property required to remain true across relevant states and operations.
- Nonfunctional requirements Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Requirements for qualities such as latency, reliability, accessibility, and security.
- Plan mode Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A product-specific mode intended for exploration and planning before implementation; restrictions vary by tool.
- PRD Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A product requirements document describing users, problems, intended behavior, scope, and constraints.
- Requirements traceability Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Links from requirements to implementation tasks, code, and verification evidence.
- Spec drift Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A mismatch between the stated specification and the implemented behavior.
- Success criteria Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Observable conditions that establish whether the intended outcome was achieved.
- Task DAG Concept · Goals, specs & plans
A directed acyclic graph of task dependencies; cycles require separate iterative control logic.
- Task decomposition Concept · Goals, specs & plans
Breaking an objective into smaller work units with clear boundaries.
- Technical design Concept · Goals, specs & plans
The architecture, interfaces, data structures, and trade-offs chosen to satisfy requirements.
Browse by topic
- Agents & architecture 23 — Who decides, what executes, and where control lives.
- Goals, specs & plans 23 — Describe the outcome before delegating the implementation.
- Loops, critics & adversaries 33 — Understand how work is challenged, repaired, and stopped.
- Multi-agent coordination 21 — Delegation, ownership, context boundaries, and aggregation.
- Context & memory 29 — What the model sees now, and what persists for later.
- Tools & output contracts 20 — Model proposals become validated, authorized operations.
- Protocols & interoperability 19 — Name the boundary: tools, agents, editors, or interfaces.
- Coding-agent internals 25 — Instructions, skills, hooks, tools, and durable artifacts.
- Retrieval & knowledge 31 — Find evidence, rank it, and preserve source boundaries.
- Evals & observability 29 — Measure outcomes and inspect the execution path.
- Inference & performance 28 — Latency, throughput, compute, and memory are different constraints.
- Models, reasoning & training 36 — Separate weight changes from context and inference-time work.
- Security & reliability 27 — Make privileges explicit and side effects recoverable.
- Generative UI & voice 18 — The interaction layer has its own contracts and timing.
- Generative & physical AI 8 — Broader model families beyond text-based assistants.
- Tools & ecosystem 44 — Recognize the role before choosing the dependency.