Glossary

Glossary

The words I use on this site, in plain terms. Each entry says where the term comes from, how I use it, what it is not, and, where one helps, an example from my company.

• Accountability

  Being the person who must explain and justify what was done, and answer for the outcome, to someone with the authority to ask.

• Agent

  A system you can give a job to, not just a question.

• Agentic organisation

  A company where people set the intent and answer for the outcomes, and agents do a growing share of the work in between: holding real jobs within written authority, sharing the company's memory, and coordinating among themselves.

• Authority

  What an agent may decide or do on its own, written down before it starts, with the point where it must stop and ask.

• Deploy, reshape, invent

  Three levels of ambition with AI.

• Drift

  When an agent's work slowly moves away from what was intended, because the goal was never clear or someone intervened at the wrong level.

• The firm's memory

  What the company knows and the agents can use.

• FTE and nullfte

  FTE, full-time equivalent: a unit for counting employees whose hours differ, so that two half-time staff count as one. nullfte: null FTE, zero full-time-equivalent employees, the question this site began with.

• Handover

  Moving a job from a person to an agent, with its authority, responsibility and accountability written down before it starts.

• Harness

  The fixed rules and checks built around an agent's job, such as what it may touch, what it must never change, when it must stop and ask, and a record of what it did.

• Human in the loop

  A person placed at the point in a process where it cannot go on without them, to approve, send, pay, override or stop.

• Human judgment

  Deciding what each possible outcome is worth to us, and so which one to choose.

• Job

  A piece of work a person used to do from start to finish, named as that person would name it.

• The line

  The point in each job where the agent stops and a person takes over.

• Orchestration

  How several agents divide a piece of work and pass it between them.

• Responsibility

  The obligation to get a piece of work done and deliver the result.