AI & vibe coding glossary
10 plain-English definitions of the AI coding terms you actually run into. No marketing fluff, no jargon parade — just what the term means and why it matters.
AI workflows
Vibe coding
Vibe coding is the practice of building software by describing intent to an AI in natural language and letting the AI write, refactor, and ship the code.
Read definition →Prompt engineering
Prompt engineering is the discipline of structuring instructions to language models — including context, constraints, and output format — to get reliably high-quality results.
Read definition →Agentic coding
Agentic coding is vibe coding done by an autonomous AI agent that reads context, plans steps, calls tools, and ships changes without you typing each instruction.
Read definition →Context engineering
Context engineering is the practice of choosing exactly what information goes into the model's context window — files, snippets, specs — so the AI has the right knowledge without noise.
Read definition →Pillar page
A pillar page is the long, evergreen guide at the center of a topic cluster — broad enough to rank for the head term, with internal links out to deeper supporting articles.
Read definition →AI concepts
AI tools
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
MCP is an open protocol from Anthropic that lets language models connect to external tools and data sources through a standard interface — the USB-C of LLM tool use.
Read definition →Cursor
Cursor is a VS Code-based AI code editor that bakes language models into the editing loop — completions, multi-file edits, codebase chat, and autonomous agents.
Read definition →Frontend
Design system
A design system is the shared set of reusable components, tokens, and rules a product uses to keep its UI consistent at scale.
Read definition →shadcn/ui
shadcn/ui is a copy-paste component library — Tailwind + Radix primitives — that has become a de facto standard for AI-generated React UIs.
Read definition →