Glossary

RESOURCES

Key terms and definitions for the AKIOS ecosystem and AI development.

AGENT

An autonomous entity that uses an LLM as a "brain" to perceive context, reason about a problem, and take actions via Tools.

AGENT_LOOP

The core execution cycle of an agent: Observe → Reason → Act → Repeat. Each iteration is called a "step." AKIOS caps this with maxSteps to prevent runaway execution.

AKIOS_CORE

The open-source governance engine (AKIOS AI). Provides policy-as-code, sandboxing, zero-trust gates, and guardrails for autonomous agents. Licensed under GPL-3.0.

AKIOS_FLUX

The compute and cost-control product. Provides low-latency inference routing, throughput/cost tuning, cost attribution per tool call, and auto-scaling. Currently in beta.

AKIOS_RADAR

The observability product (flight recorder). Provides semantic tracing, session replay, hallucination detection, and immutable audit logs. Currently in beta.

AUDIT_LOG

A cryptographically signed, append-only record of every agent input, output, tool call, and policy decision. Required for regulatory compliance in regulated industries.

CHAIN_OF_THOUGHT_(COT)

A prompting technique that encourages the model to generate intermediate reasoning steps before providing the final answer.

CIRCUIT_BREAKER

A fault-tolerance pattern that halts agent execution when error rates exceed a threshold, preventing cascading failures and cost overruns.

CONTEXT_WINDOW

The maximum amount of text (measured in tokens) that the LLM can consider at one time. Includes system prompt, conversation history, and current query.

CONTROL_PLANE

The governance layer that sits between your application and LLM providers. Intercepts every prompt and completion to enforce policies, collect traces, and manage costs.

COST_ATTRIBUTION

The ability to track and assign inference costs to individual agents, tools, users, or business units. A core feature of AKIOS FLUX.

DETERMINISTIC_COMPLIANCE

Ensuring that policy enforcement produces the same result every time, regardless of model non-determinism. Achieved through rule-based guardrails rather than LLM-based filters.

EDGE_RUNTIME

A lightweight execution environment that runs agents close to end users. Supports Vercel Edge, AWS Lambda@Edge, and Cloudflare Workers.

EMBEDDINGS

Vector representations of text. Used to measure semantic similarity between two pieces of text, enabling "semantic search" in RAG pipelines.

FEW-SHOT

Providing a few examples (shots) in the prompt to demonstrate the desired behavior or format.

FLIGHT_RECORDER

A metaphor for AKIOS RADAR's always-on recording of agent sessions. Like an aircraft black box, it captures everything needed to replay and diagnose failures.

GUARDRAIL

A safety layer that intercepts inputs or outputs to check for violations (PII, toxicity, topic drift) and can block or sanitize content. Configured as input rails and output rails.

HALLUCINATION

When an LLM generates plausible-sounding but factually incorrect information. AKIOS RADAR can detect hallucinations by comparing outputs against grounding sources.

HUMAN-IN-THE-LOOP

A workflow pattern where the agent pauses execution at a decision point and waits for human approval before continuing. Critical for high-stakes actions like financial transactions.

MODEL_PROVIDER

An interface that connects AKIOS to an LLM backend. Built-in providers include OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral. Custom providers can be implemented for local models.

MULTI-AGENT

An architecture where multiple specialized agents collaborate on a task. A supervisor agent delegates sub-tasks and aggregates results.

POLICY-AS-CODE

Defining security and compliance policies in code (rather than manual checklists). Policies are version-controlled, testable, and enforced automatically at runtime.

RAG_(RETRIEVAL-AUGMENTED_GENERATION)

A pattern where the agent fetches relevant documents from a knowledge base (usually a vector database) and injects them into the prompt before answering.

SANDBOX

An isolated execution environment for tools. Prevents tools from accessing unauthorized resources, network endpoints, or file system paths.

SEMANTIC_TRACE

A structured log of an agent's reasoning process, including each thought, tool call, tool result, and final answer. Richer than traditional request logs because it captures intent.

SESSION_REPLAY

The ability to replay an agent session step-by-step, seeing exactly what the model received, what it produced, and what tools it called. A core feature of AKIOS RADAR.

TEMPERATURE

A parameter controlling the randomness of the model output. Low (0.0) is deterministic/focused; High (1.0) is creative/random.

TOOL_(FUNCTION_CALLING)

A deterministic function (API, script, database query) exposed to the LLM. The model can decide to call the tool by outputting a structured JSON payload matching the tool's schema.

ZERO-SHOT

Asking the model to perform a task without providing any examples in the prompt.

ZERO-TRUST

A security model where no agent, tool, or request is trusted by default. Every action requires explicit policy authorization, regardless of origin.