The Platform PM

Glossary and sources

Field Guide

AI agents: orchestration platforms

10

Glossary and sources

5 min read · Chapter 10 of 10

Words that mean something else here

TermWhat you'd assumeWhat it means here
AgentSoftware that acts on its ownAnything from a chatbot to a workflow; engineers mean the model picks the next step
AutonomousNo human involvedUsually fewer than 10 steps, then a person
MemoryThe agent remembers youThe context, a session store, extracted facts or training; only facts persist per user
Context windowWhat the model usesThe model's maximum; products cap it lower, and models use less well
Tool callThe model did somethingThe model asked; your runtime acted and owns the side effect
GuardrailA security controlOften a bypassable classifier; only a deterministic policy check is a control
SandboxIsolatedA shared-kernel container, gVisor, a microVM, or just "no network"
MCP serverA remote serviceOften a local process with your full privileges
RegistryA vetted catalogueVerified names and metadata; nobody scans the code
Zero data retentionNothing storedPer endpoint; stateful features and some top models are excluded
DeprecatedGoneUsually still working, with a date set; in Azure's API, already retired
Deployer, providerDevOps wordsEU legal roles; an enterprise can become the provider
IndemnityCover for what the agent doesCopyright claims on outputs only

What surprised me

The metered call. In telco I could multiply minutes by the price on a rate deck. Here every lap re-sends the whole conversation, so the meter speeds up the longer the call lasts, and an uncapped loop costs fifteen times a normal run.

Remittance data. In order to cash, I learned to match data that arrives separately from the money. Here the data can give orders: an email the agent reads is an instruction it may follow, and no parameterized query stops it.

Approval as the control. In procure to pay, an approver checks a purchase order against an invoice. Here the approver sees a prompt with little context and, in one lab's data, clicks yes about 93% of the time, and an approval nobody reads ends up as little more than a log entry.

The merchant-locked card. In spend management, a card locked to one merchant capped the damage at one merchant and one amount. A scoped token caps which host the agent can reach, but a fooled agent can still do anything the token allows there.

Someone else's calendar. In cross-border payouts, holidays and cut-offs belonged to the destination. Here the whole product lives on someone else's calendar: the model I tested against retires on 45 days' to six months' notice, and its replacement counts tokens differently.

Sources

Read on October 2, 2026 unless dated; "search result" means seen only as a search snippet.

Protocols, standards and frameworks

Governments, regulators and courts

Labs

Clouds

Research

Analysts, surveys, filings, incidents

Law firms and press (search results unless noted)

Vendor and secondary sources (small companies kept generic)

Field Guides are learning notes, not legal or compliance advice. Rules and fees change; check the cited primary sources before you act on anything here.