Glossary. Plain-English definitions for AI assistants and the work around them.
Agentic AI
Agentic AI describes systems that act autonomously across multiple steps to complete goals, the pattern behind 2026's action-taking assistants.
AI Agent
An AI agent uses large language models to plan and execute multi-step actions toward a goal, taking real actions in your connected tools.
AI Agent vs AI Assistant
An AI assistant responds to prompts; an AI agent pursues goals autonomously across steps and tools. Why the distinction matters when buying software.
AI Chief of Staff
An AI chief of staff holds standing duties across email, calendar and tasks without being asked each time. How that differs from an AI assistant, and what neither replaces.
AI Email Assistant
An AI email assistant uses large language models to triage, draft, organize, and act on email automatically, handling the work, not just speeding it.
AI Executive Assistant
An AI executive assistant handles the work of a human EA, inbox, calendar, follow-ups, and briefings, at a fraction of the cost with no training.
AI Meeting Notetaker
An AI meeting notetaker records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings automatically, turning audio into searchable notes and action items.
AI Personal Assistant
An AI personal assistant works from your email, calendar and tasks. What it can do depends on what you connect and what you let it act on.
Async Communication
Async communication is information exchange that doesn't require everyone present at once, the default pattern for distributed remote teams.
Autonomous AI
Autonomous AI takes actions on standing goals without per-action prompting: it reads, drafts, schedules, and acts instead of waiting.
Calendar Intelligence
Calendar intelligence reads and reasons about your schedule, surfacing meeting prep, conflicts, focus time, and links to email and tasks.
Context Switching
Context switching is the cognitive cost of moving between tasks. UC Irvine research measures 23 minutes of refocus time per interruption.
Daily Brief
A daily brief consolidates email, calendar, tasks, and follow-ups into one scannable summary of what you need to know and decide today.
Deep Work
Deep work is Cal Newport's term for distraction-free concentration that pushes cognitive limits, the work most knowledge workers do least.
Delegated Email Access
Delegated email access lets a person or an app read or send from someone else's mailbox. The kinds of access, who approves a send, and how it's logged.
Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix sorts tasks into four quadrants by urgency and importance, a framework for prioritizing when everything feels critical.
Email Bankruptcy
Email bankruptcy is the deliberate act of giving up on your inbox backlog and starting fresh, a rational response to email overload.
Email Batching
Email batching means processing email in scheduled blocks, usually 2 to 4 a day, instead of checking constantly. The top email habit.
Email Response Time
Email response time is how long a message waits for its first reply. Which emails to count, business vs clock hours, median vs average, and reply vs resolution.
Email Triage
Email triage decides what each incoming message needs: a reply, a decision, a date, a hand-off, or nothing. How it differs from prioritizing and follow-up tracking.
Focus Time
Focus time is an uninterrupted block of high-cognitive work scheduled and protected on your calendar, the antidote to a day eaten by meetings.
Follow-Up Tracking
Follow-up tracking watches whose move each conversation is: replies you owe, and replies you're waiting on. The clock, the exclusions, and what closes a loop.
Getting Things Done (GTD)
Getting Things Done is David Allen's method built on five steps and one idea: move every commitment out of your head into a trusted system.
Inbox Bankruptcy
Inbox bankruptcy is the deliberate act of archiving or deleting all email older than a chosen date, a rational response to inbox overload.
Inbox Zero
Inbox zero is the state of having no unprocessed email. Merlin Mann's discipline treats the inbox as a transient queue, not permanent storage.
Morning Routine
A morning routine is a consistent sequence at the start of your workday that builds focus and cuts decision fatigue before reactive work hits.
One-Touch Email
One-touch email is the discipline of acting on each email the first time you open it — reply, archive, delegate, or defer — rather than re-reading later.
Proactive AI
Proactive AI starts work without being asked: on a schedule, when an event happens, or when a condition is met. What each trigger needs to run reliably.
Reactive AI
Reactive AI responds only when prompted and does nothing until asked, the pattern behind most chatbots that proactive AI is built to surpass.
Shared Inbox
A shared inbox is one email address multiple team members manage together, with assignment, status tracking, and internal collaboration.
Snooze Email
Snoozing an email hides it from your inbox until a set time, when it returns to the top. A native Gmail feature now standard across clients.
Task Extraction
Task extraction automatically finds action items, commitments, and deadlines inside email and chat, then captures them as structured tasks.
Time Blocking
Time blocking assigns every hour of your workday to a specific task on the calendar, turning a vague to-do list into committed schedule blocks.
Two-Minute Rule
The two-minute rule: if an action takes less than two minutes, do it now. A core GTD heuristic that stops small tasks from piling into overwhelm.
Voice Tone Matching
Voice tone matching is AI that drafts messages sounding like a specific person, learned from their sent folder and adapted per recipient.
Voice-Matched Email Drafting
Voice-matched email drafting is AI that writes replies in your own voice: your phrasing, tone, and sign-offs, learned from your sent folder.
Working Memory
Working memory holds and manipulates information in active attention. Capacity is limited to 4 to 7 items, which is why email overload overwhelms.