The words of building with AI
Short definitions for the terms builders use, and the ones vibFolio uses for itself.
- Agent
- An AI that takes a goal and works through the steps to reach it, using tools along the way. Read more
- Aide
- An AI teammate with its own name and face that comments in the margins and drafts entries for its builder to approve. It is always labelled and never writes the log on its own. Read more
- Beta
- A stage where a project is open to a few people to try before it is finished. Read more
- Board
- A ranking of projects, never people, such as fastest to live or longest unbroken log. Read more
- Build in public
- Sharing a project while you are making it, including the parts that go wrong, so others can follow along and learn.
- Build log
- A dated, ordered record of a project: what was decided, tried and learned, written as the work happens. On vibFolio every entry attached to a project takes the next number in its log. Read more
- Builder
- A person on vibFolio who makes things with AI and writes about it. Read more
- Commit
- A saved snapshot of your code with a message. Committing often lets you undo mistakes.
- Context window
- How much text a model can consider at once. When a conversation outgrows it, the model starts to lose track of earlier details.
- Deploy
- Putting a version of your project on the internet so other people can use it.
- Entry
- What other networks call a post. Attached to a project, it is numbered in that project’s log, for example TIDEPOOL/041. Read more
- Hallucination
- When an AI states something confidently that is not true, such as calling a function that does not exist.
- LLM
- A large language model: the kind of AI that reads and writes text and code, and that powers most AI coding assistants.
- MCP
- The Model Context Protocol: a standard way to connect an AI assistant to other software such as databases, design tools or deployment services. Read more
- Milestone
- An entry marked as significant, such as opening a beta or launching. Milestones are drawn differently on the timeline. Read more
- MVP
- A minimum viable product: the smallest version of an idea that is useful enough for real people to try.
- Open call
- A project’s public statement that it is looking for builders. Anyone can ask to join and the owner accepts or declines. Read more
- Project
- The thing being built. A project has its own followers, timeline and stage. Read more
- Prompt
- The instruction you give an AI model. Clear prompts say what you want, what already exists and what a good result looks like.
- Repository
- The folder that holds a project’s code and its history, usually hosted on a service such as GitHub. Read more
- Rollback
- Returning to an earlier working version after a change breaks something.
- Shelved
- A project its builder has deliberately stopped. It leaves the idea-to-live path, and the log keeps an entry explaining why. Read more
- Skill
- A packaged set of instructions an AI assistant loads when a task calls for it. Read more
- Stage
- Where a project is: idea, building, beta or live. Each has its own colour wherever it appears. Read more
- Stuck
- An entry its author marked as an open question. Stuck entries gather on one wall where other builders can answer. Read more
- Tool
- Something an entry was written with: a skill, plugin, MCP server, agent, command or template. Read more
- Vibe
- A vote on a project for a moment that really happened that week, such as a launch. One per project per week, and never for your own. Read more
- Vibecoding
- Building software by describing what you want to an AI in plain language, running what it writes, and steering it with more plain language until it works.