Lexicon
A common language
These are the words we use, and what we mean by them. When a team and its AI partners share a vocabulary, nobody has to translate. Where an older field already has a good word, we use it and say where it comes from.
| Term | What we mean |
|---|---|
| AI partner | Any AI that works with a person over time, as opposed to a tool used once. The umbrella term. |
| Alliance charter | The written result of designing the alliance: what the person wants, what the partner does and never does, how it challenges and supports, what stays private, and when to review. The AI partner reads it at the start of every conversation, and the person can change it at any time. |
| Designing the alliance | Agreeing out loud how two parties will work together. The practice comes from Co-Active coaching (CTI). We use it between a person and their AI partner, and the person holds the power. |
| Familiar | A general-purpose AI partner that works for one person over time and gets to know them: their goals, their way of working and their limits. |
| Familiarity | What a person and their AI partner know about each other, built over time, checked by the person, and used to fit the work to that person without re-telling. It runs both ways. See the home page for its three senses and four parts. |
| Fluency | The person's side of familiarity: knowing what their AI can do, where it fails and how to direct it. |
| Human–AI pair | A person and their AI partner working as one team. |
| Meeting mirror | A private reflection on one meeting, written by an AI from the transcript. It shows a person how they showed up, not what was decided. |
| Redesigning the alliance | Revisiting the charter when something goes wrong or changes. An alliance is never finished. |
| Re-telling rate | How often you must explain again something you already told your AI partner. A simple measure of familiarity. |
| Specialist partner | An AI partner built for one job, such as a meeting coach, a writing partner or a sales-preparation partner. It is best made by your familiar, so it starts out already knowing you. |
| Starter pack | A block of text you paste into your own AI to start a partner and run the design-the-alliance conversation. Every tool on this site is one. |
Missing a word, or think one of these is wrong? Use the feedback button on this page. The lexicon changes when the people using it agree.