- Slop: plausible, unverified AI output that degrades a codebase or body of work.
- Vibe coding: prompting until something works, without reviewing or understanding it. Legitimate where mistakes are cheap.
- Blast radius: everything a failure can hurt (users, data, systems, future maintainers).
- Black-box threshold: the blast radius beyond which code must be read, tested and explained.
- Guardrail: an automated check that fails loudly without human attention.
- Harness: the assembled set of guardrails a change must pass to ship.
- Context wall: the challenge of getting the right instructions, data and tools into the model’s working memory at the right moment.
- Skill folder: a folder holding a SKILL.md (procedure) and any scripts/data, read by an agent on demand.
- Sub-agent: a specialist created on the fly by pointing a capable agent at a skill folder.
- Mini CEO: the developer’s management role (set the standard, build the gate, judge the results, sign the outcomes).
- Replication Test: a spec, alone, handed to a fresh agent, reproducing a product you would accept.
- Evidence trio (SPEC.md, DECISIONS.md, CRITIQUE.md): the trail an audit can stand on.