# AI chatbot and WhatsApp glossary

> The terms you'll meet when you put an AI agent on your website, WhatsApp and Telegram, each in a sentence first, then in a little more detail.

Canonical: https://heykiko.io/glossary
Last updated: 2026-11-05

## AI agents

- [AI agent](https://heykiko.io/glossary/ai-agent) - An AI agent is software that uses a language model to decide its own steps and use tools, such as booking or looking up data, to finish a task.
- [AI chatbot](https://heykiko.io/glossary/ai-chatbot) - An AI chatbot is a program that answers people in a chat using a language model, in their own words, rather than from a fixed script of buttons.
- [RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)](https://heykiko.io/glossary/rag) - RAG is how an AI answers from your documents: it searches them for passages that fit a question, then writes its answer from those passages.
- [Embeddings](https://heykiko.io/glossary/embeddings) - Embeddings are lists of numbers that capture the meaning of a piece of text, so texts with similar meanings can be found even when the words differ.
- [Vector database](https://heykiko.io/glossary/vector-database) - A vector database stores embeddings and finds the ones closest to a question quickly, which is how a chatbot finds the right passage in your documents.
- [Chunking](https://heykiko.io/glossary/chunking) - Chunking is cutting long documents into short passages before they're indexed, so a search can return just the part that answers a question.
- [Knowledge base](https://heykiko.io/glossary/knowledge-base) - A knowledge base is the content an AI chatbot answers from: your website pages, documents, product catalogue and any connected data.
- [Hallucination](https://heykiko.io/glossary/hallucination) - A hallucination is an AI answer that sounds right but is made up, such as a price, a policy or a promise that isn't in the business's content.
- [System prompt](https://heykiko.io/glossary/system-prompt) - A system prompt is the standing instructions an AI chatbot follows in every conversation: who it works for, how it speaks and what it must never do.

## WhatsApp

- [WhatsApp Business API](https://heykiko.io/glossary/whatsapp-business-api) - The WhatsApp Business API, officially the WhatsApp Business Platform, connects a business's WhatsApp number to software instead of the phone app.
- [WABA (WhatsApp Business Account)](https://heykiko.io/glossary/waba) - A WABA is the WhatsApp Business Account in Meta that holds a business's API phone numbers, message templates, messaging limits and billing.
- [WhatsApp 24-hour window](https://heykiko.io/glossary/customer-service-window) - The WhatsApp 24-hour window is the time after a customer's last message or call in which a business may reply with any message, not just a template.
- [Template message](https://heykiko.io/glossary/template-message) - A template message is a WhatsApp message a business writes in advance and Meta approves, the only kind it can send outside the 24-hour window.
- [WhatsApp message categories](https://heykiko.io/glossary/whatsapp-message-categories) - WhatsApp template messages are marketing, utility or authentication; Meta prices each category differently, by the customer's country.
- [Service message](https://heykiko.io/glossary/service-message) - A service message is a business's reply inside WhatsApp's 24-hour window; since October 2026 each number gets 1,000 free a month, then they're charged.
- [WhatsApp coexistence](https://heykiko.io/glossary/whatsapp-coexistence) - Coexistence lets a business use the same WhatsApp number in both the WhatsApp Business app and the API, with chats kept in sync between them.

## Customer service

- [Human hand-off](https://heykiko.io/glossary/human-handoff) - Human hand-off is when an AI chatbot passes a conversation to a person on the team, with the whole chat, and stops replying to that customer.
- [Shared inbox](https://heykiko.io/glossary/shared-inbox) - A shared inbox is one place where a team answers customer conversations together, with each chat assigned, visible to everyone and answered once.
- [CSAT (customer satisfaction score)](https://heykiko.io/glossary/csat) - CSAT is a customer satisfaction score: the share of customers who rate an interaction as good, usually from a short rating question after it ends.
- [Lead capture](https://heykiko.io/glossary/lead-capture) - Lead capture is collecting a potential customer's contact details, such as name and email, so the business can follow up.
- [Opt-in and opt-out](https://heykiko.io/glossary/opt-in) - Opt-in is a customer agreeing to receive messages from a business; opt-out is them asking to stop, which the business must honour.