Glossary

AI, in plain English

Definitions of the terms we use across this site. Each entry is written for an SME owner or operator, not a data scientist or a vendor. Where we have a distinct view on a term, the entry says so.

Agentic AI

Agentic AI is a class of AI system in which a large language model is given access to tools and the autonomy to choose which tool to use and in what order, in pursuit of a goal. The distinction from a chatbot is that an agentic system can act on the world (read a file, send an email, call an API, write to a database), not only respond with text.

AI Readiness

AI readiness is a measure of whether a business has the data, the processes, the team capability, and the clear use cases needed to adopt AI usefully. A business with low AI readiness is not blocked from using AI; it is blocked from getting reliable value from AI without first investing in the foundations.

AI Strategy

AI Strategy is a vendor-neutral plan for what AI a business should and should not adopt, in what order, with what budget, and what risk. A working AI strategy answers the question "what should we do?" with specifics, not principles.

Bounded AI

Bounded AI is an AI system that has been deliberately scoped to a specific domain, restricted to a defined set of tools, and logged on every interaction. The opposite of a general-purpose chatbot. The pattern MoonBoots Consultancy builds by default.

Fractional AI Lead

A Fractional AI Lead is an external AI leadership role on a weekly or monthly engagement, replacing the full-time hire many businesses cannot justify. The lead owns the AI roadmap, evaluates vendors, reports to the board, and holds AI strategy across the business for the duration of the engagement.

Hierarchical Multi-Agent Architecture

A hierarchical multi-agent architecture is an agentic AI pattern in which a small orchestrator agent delegates subtasks to specialised worker agents, each with a narrow, bounded job. Faster, cheaper, and more reliable than the single-agent pattern that most off-the-shelf AI products default to.

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