The words, without the shrug

Running code in many locations near users.

Executing in whichever of many worldwide locations is closest to the visitor. A large win for work needing no central data, and a trap for work that queries a database in one region.

See also CDN, Latency, Region

Text converted to numbers so similarity can be measured.

A numeric representation of meaning. Two passages about the same topic land near each other, which is how a retrieval system finds relevant documents without matching exact words.

See also RAG, Grounding

What a user sees when there is genuinely nothing.

The screen shown when a request succeeded and returned no items. Must look different from an error, and is the first thing every new user experiences.

See also Loading state, Skeleton

One address on a server that does one thing.

A path and a method together. The same path with a different verb is a different endpoint doing something different: GET /orders lists them, POST /orders creates one.

See also API, HTTP, Idempotency

A complete running copy of your app.

Local, preview, and production are separate copies with their own configuration and usually their own data. The difference that causes the most surprises is data volume.

See also Environment variable, Preview deployment

Configuration supplied from outside your code.

A value handed to your program when it starts, so the same build can point at a test database locally and the real one in production. Where secrets live, because they must never be in code.

See also Secret, Environment

Waiting longer between each retry.

Retrying after one second, then two, then four, with a little randomness added. Prevents everyone retrying in unison and turning a struggling service into a dead one.

See also Retry, Idempotency