Glossary

The words behind working with AI and your documents

Each industry term gets a neutral definition you can quote, then the part most definitions leave out — where the idea stops working — and only then what MindMax does about it. Terms marked MindMax concept are ideas specific to how MindMax works; each has a single page on the concepts side.

Reading and answering

What happens between a question about your documents and an answer you can trust.

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)Industry termAnswering from retrieved passages — excellent for lookups, and quietly unreliable on whole books.Vectorless RAGIndustry termRetrieval without an embedding index: the model reads the structure and decides what to open. Better choices, more model calls.Full-text-first answeringMindMax conceptA document that fits a stated reading budget is read whole; a book is read by its structure. Retrieval is the fallback.Semantic searchIndustry termSearching by meaning instead of words — what it finds in your own files, and the exact terms it blurs.GroundingIndustry termTying an answer to its sources. Without a granularity, “it gives sources” means almost nothing.HallucinationIndustry termFluent text supported by nothing — and why better models reduce it without removing the need to check.Checked quotesMindMax conceptEvery claim carries the verbatim words it rests on, matched against the source before you see it.OCRIndustry termTurning page images into text. The hard part is knowing which pages came out wrong before you quote them.

Thinking

Working a problem through, with methods that are carried out rather than just named.

Mind mapIndustry termA radial layout of a topic. The constraint was never the drawing — it is that you can only map what you already thought of.Mental modelIndustry termA reusable way of reasoning. Knowing the list is easy; recalling one in the moment and running it is not.Agent skills (SKILL.md)Industry termA method written down once as a file an AI follows when the job fits. Instructions, not new abilities.

Writing

How AI writing reaches your files without taking them over.

Track changesIndustry termShowing every insertion and deletion on the text itself. An AI that hands back a new copy instead is not offering a review.Edits wait for youMindMax conceptThe AI may add to your folder, but a change to what you wrote is marked and written only when you accept it.Argument ledgerMindMax conceptA running record of what a long draft has argued, defined and promised, handed to every later section.

Your files

Where the material lives, and what stays true if you stop using the app.

Knowledge baseIndustry termMaterial kept so questions can be answered from it later. Personal ones fail at the filing step, not the software.Local-firstIndustry termYour data lives in files you own and the app is a client on top. The test is what survives the vendor.

How this is organised

Terms coined here are defined once, on their concept page, and this glossary points at them. A second definition here would mean two pages competing to define the same word and two places to keep in sync.

Industry terms are written the other way round: a neutral definition first, so it can be quoted without a sales pitch attached; then the part that is actually useful — where the idea breaks down; and only then what MindMax does about it, with a screenshot of where you would meet it.