AGENTIC AI GLOSSARY · GUIDED LEARNING · REVIEWED SOURCES

Agentic AI Glossary

Understand agentic AI without fighting the vocabulary. Ask a question in everyday language, look up one of 721 reviewed concepts, or follow a guided path from foundations to governed multi-agent systems.

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721reviewed concepts
8 tracks32 guided lessons
Local MiniLMsame-origin proposals
Receiptsdeterministic replay
Filters & starting pointsCategory, entry type, lifecycle, and core concepts
Choose one clear starting point
Inspect how this answer was selected CATS route, Tier-S admission, candidate evidence, receipt, and replay
CATS route T0 · Exact identity
Query family General discovery
Executed query Browse all terms
Typed filters None
Why this path CATS is preparing the least expensive qualified path.
Active engine Deterministic fallback
T0Exactwaiting
T1Ready pathwaiting
T2Lexicalwaiting
T3Graphwaiting
T4Wasmwaiting
T5Cachewaiting
T6Semanticwaiting
T7Explainwaiting
Inspect ranking See the typed plan, corrections, field evidence, scores, and receipt
Original question
None
Normalized input
none
Executed query
browse all terms
Family
General discovery
Corrections
None
Alias expansion
None
Deterministic rewrite
None
Semantic coverage
4792 questions · 4026 alternate phrases
Filters
None
CATS route
T0 · Exact identity
Executor
Deterministic fallback while CATS prepares
Engine
Deterministic JavaScript
Eligible paths
T0
Withheld paths
T1–T7 until qualified
Cache
No sealed result reused
CATS configuration
waiting
Tier-S verification
Waiting to shadow-check the selected route.
Receipt
waiting
Top admitted candidatesStable score and visible evidence
    Agentic AI & Tools

    MCP Task

    industry
    mcp-task
    Entry type
    concept
    Lifecycle
    concept
    Reviewed
    2026-08-14

    Why it matters

    It makes the workflow inspectable and keeps autonomy, tools, approval, and authority from being blurred together.

    Example

    The Trace Spine can show this concept as a visible step while a question moves from intent to retrieval, governance, proof, and receipt.

    Common confusion

    An agent role can coordinate work without becoming an independent authority over canonical state.

    How OverLift uses it

    OverLift teaches MCP Task as an adjacent industry or mathematical concept so visitors can compare it with the current architecture. Its presence in the glossary is not a claim that every variant is implemented.

    Explore the technical detail Formal definition, lifecycle, use boundaries, capabilities, prerequisites, and comparisons

    Technical definition

    Within a governed agent workflow, MCP Task is the formal concept for a durable handle for a long-running MCP operation whose status and result may be retrieved later.

    Where it appears

    Nine-stage agentic flow Trace Spine Decision Receipt

    Lifecycle and review boundary

    MCP Task is an industry, mathematical, or engineering concept included for learning and comparison rather than an implementation claim.

    Use it when

    Use MCP Task when the evidence and system behavior match this definition closely enough to make the distinction useful.

    Avoid or reconsider when

    Avoid using MCP Task as a vague synonym for intelligence, correctness, safety, or permission when those properties have not been established.

    Learn these first

    Compare with

    See this architecture working

    Move from one definition into Sean Findley’s product and engineering proof.

    LEARN THE SECURITY BOUNDARY

    Retrieval can inform an agent. Retrieved content cannot grant it authority.

    The glossary demonstrates the same OverLift rule it teaches: exact and semantic retrieval may propose useful evidence, but source eligibility, permissions, capability admission, deterministic fallback, Tier-S verification, receipts, and replay decide what the product may trust.

    PRIVACY What information leaves the chosen boundary?

    Prefer browser-local, same-origin, or offline processing; disclose only the approved evidence a remote service actually needs.

    SECURITY What can this code or agent reach, call, change, or persist?

    Use worker and WebAssembly containment, explicit imports, typed tools, deadlines, allowlists, and fail-closed defaults.

    AUTHORITY What is allowed to become official truth or state?

    Keep identity, permissions, policy, approval, exact execution, verification, receipts, and replay outside probabilistic control.

    Foundational research sources See foundational sources; every ecosystem profile also carries its own official source record

    OpenAI Agents SDK

    OpenAI

    Agents, tools, handoffs, guardrails, sessions, tracing, and human review.

    Model Context Protocol

    MCP Project

    Hosts, clients, servers, tools, resources, prompts, elicitation, and tasks.

    Agent2Agent Protocol

    A2A Project

    Agent Cards, tasks, messages, parts, artifacts, streaming, and agent discovery.

    Agentic retrieval

    Microsoft

    Knowledge bases, knowledge sources, query planning, subqueries, and citations.

    LangGraph persistence

    LangChain

    Threads, checkpoints, durable execution, interrupts, and time-travel debugging.