Glossary
Automation and AI terms, defined plainly.
40 terms you'll meet when you automate work with AI: webhooks and triggers, agents and tokens, retries and approvals, keys and roles. Each one with an example and how it works in Fluxo Flow.
Triggers & webhooks
- Cron expressionA cron expression is a compact five-field string (minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week) that tells a scheduler exactly when to run a job.
- HMAC signatureAn HMAC signature is a hash of a message computed with a secret key that only the sender and receiver know, sent alongside the message so the receiver can prove it came from the sender and wasn't altered.
- Polling vs webhooksPolling means your system asks another system for new data on a fixed schedule; webhooks mean the other system pushes each event to you the moment it happens.
- WebhookA webhook is an HTTP request that one system sends to a URL you give it, automatically, the moment an event happens, so the receiver doesn't have to keep asking.
Workflow design
- ActionAn action is a workflow step that does something outside the workflow, such as creating a CRM record, sending an email, posting to Slack or calling an API.
- Approval workflowAn approval workflow is a process that routes a request (an invoice, an expense, a discount, a piece of content) to one or more designated people who must approve or reject it before it can proceed.
- Human in the loop (HITL)Human in the loop (HITL) is a design in which an automated process pauses at chosen points for a person to review, correct, approve or reject its output before it continues.
- JSON schemaJSON Schema is a standard vocabulary for describing what a JSON document must look like (which fields are required, their types, formats, allowed values and ranges) so data can be validated automatically.
- Sub-workflowA sub-workflow is a workflow that another workflow calls as one of its steps, passing data in and getting a result back, so shared logic is built once and reused.
- TriggerA trigger is the event that starts a workflow run: a person pressing Run, a schedule coming due, a webhook arriving, or a new record or event in a connected app.
- WorkflowA workflow is a repeatable sequence of steps, started by a trigger, that turns an input (a form, an invoice, a new deal) into an outcome, with defined rules for each decision along the way.
AI
- Agentic workflowAn agentic workflow is a workflow with a fixed overall structure in which some steps use a language model to read, classify, decide between predefined branches or draft content.
- AI agentAn AI agent is a system in which a language model decides its own next step, calls tools (APIs, searches, other systems), reads the results and repeats until it judges the goal reached.
- AI guardrailsAI guardrails are automated checks placed before or after a model call that block, correct or route away inputs and outputs that break your rules, such as banned content, leaked data or invalid formats.
- BYOK (bring your own key)BYOK, or bring your own key, means a software product runs its AI features on an API key from your own AI provider account, so usage is billed to you directly by the provider instead of being resold through the product.
- Context windowA context window is the maximum number of tokens a language model can take into account in a single request, counting the instructions, the input data and the reply it writes.
- LLMAn LLM, or large language model, is a neural network trained on large amounts of text that generates text by repeatedly predicting the next token, which lets it summarize, classify, extract and draft.
- OpenAI-compatible endpointAn OpenAI-compatible endpoint is an AI API that accepts requests and returns responses in the same format as OpenAI's API, so software written for OpenAI can call other providers, gateways or self-hosted models by changing the base URL and key.
- Prompt injectionPrompt injection is an attack in which text that a language model processes (an email, a web page, a document) contains instructions that override or subvert the instructions the developer gave it.
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a technique in which relevant information is looked up from your own data at request time and added to the prompt, so the model answers from those facts rather than from memory alone.
- Structured outputStructured output is a model response in a predefined, machine-readable format, typically a JSON object matching a schema, so the next steps of a workflow can use the fields directly instead of parsing prose.
- TokenA token is the unit of text a language model reads and writes, usually a word, part of a word or a punctuation mark, and the unit AI providers use to price usage and set context limits.
Reliability
- Dead-letter queueA dead-letter queue is a holding place for messages or items that couldn't be processed after all retries, kept aside with their error so a person can inspect, fix and replay them instead of losing them.
- Dry runA dry run executes a workflow end to end with its side effects simulated, so you can see what every step would do without sending, writing or charging anything.
- Exponential backoffExponential backoff is a retry strategy in which the wait before each new attempt grows exponentially (for example 1, 2, 4, 8 seconds), usually with random jitter, up to a maximum number of attempts or delay.
- Idempotency keyAn idempotency key is a unique value a client sends with a request so that, if the same request is retried, the server recognizes it and returns the original result instead of doing the work a second time.
- Rate limitA rate limit is a cap an API puts on how many requests a client may make in a time window; requests over the limit are refused, usually with HTTP status 429 Too Many Requests.
Security & access
- API key vs OAuthAn API key is a static secret that identifies the caller and grants whatever access it was created with, while OAuth issues short-lived, scoped tokens after a user approves access; OAuth is safer for user-facing connections, keys are simpler for server-to-server use.
- Audit logAn audit log is a chronological, tamper-resistant record of who did what in a system and when, kept so that changes, approvals and access can be traced afterwards.
- Multi-tenant workspace isolationMulti-tenant workspace isolation means many customers (tenants) share one software system while each workspace's data, credentials and activity are kept strictly separate, so no tenant can see or affect another's.
- OAuth 2.0OAuth 2.0 is an authorization standard that lets you grant one application limited, revocable access to your account in another service, without giving it your password, by issuing it access tokens with specific scopes.
- RBAC (role-based access control)Role-based access control (RBAC) is a way of managing permissions in which access rights are attached to roles (such as Admin, Editor or Viewer) and people get rights by being assigned a role, rather than permission by permission.
- Scoped API keyA scoped API key is an API credential limited to specific permissions (scopes), often with an expiry date, so that a leaked or misused key can only do what it was explicitly allowed to do.
- SSO and SAMLSingle sign-on (SSO) lets people use one company identity to sign in to many applications, and SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) is a widely used standard that carries that sign-in from the identity provider to each app.
Platforms & business
- iPaaSiPaaS, or integration platform as a service, is cloud-hosted software that connects applications and data sources and automates processes between them, without the buyer running integration servers.
- Lead routingLead routing is the process of automatically assigning each new lead to the right salesperson, team or nurture track based on rules such as territory, company size, product interest, score or round-robin rotation.
- Low-codeLow-code describes development tools where most of an application or workflow is built visually, with small amounts of code (expressions, scripts or API calls) added where the visual tools run out.
- No-code automationNo-code automation is building automated workflows with visual tools (drag-and-drop canvases, forms and pickers) instead of writing code, so people who know the process can automate it themselves.
- RPA (robotic process automation)Robotic process automation (RPA) uses software bots that operate applications through their user interface (clicking, typing and reading screens) the way a person would, typically to automate systems that have no usable API.
- White labelWhite-label software is a product built by one company that another company resells under its own brand, name and domain, with the original vendor hidden from the end customer.
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