Glossary ✍

To wrap your mind around the concepts we present throughout the kernel, here is a glossary of commonly used terms

Semantic Kernel (SK) - The orchestrator that fulfills a user's ASK with SK's available PLUGINS.

Ask - What a user requests to the Semantic Kernel to help achieve the user's goal.

"We make ASKs to the SK"

Plugins - A domain-specific collection made available to the SK as a group of finely-tuned functions.

"We have a PLUGIN for using Office better"

Function - A computational machine comprised of Semantic AI and/or native code that's available in a PLUGIN.

"The Office PLUGIN has many FUNCTIONS"

Native Function - expressed with traditional computing language (C#, Python, Typescript) and easily integrates with SK

Semantic Function - expressed in natural language in a text file "skprompt.txt" using SK's Prompt Template language. Each semantic function is defined by a unique prompt template file, developed using modern prompt engineering techniques.

Memory - a collection of semantic knowledge, based on facts, events, documents, indexed with embeddings.

The kernel is designed to encourage function composition, allowing users to combine multiple functions (native and semantic) into a single pipeline.