Glossary

The words you’ll meet on Stacks, from Freemium to MCP, in plain English.

On Stacks

Category: One of the nine shelves, such as Design or Privacy. Each category is split into topics. See it on Stacks
Topic: A smaller group inside a category, like Fonts inside Design or Storage inside Privacy.
Collection: A hand-picked set of tools for one job that cuts across categories. See it on Stacks
Tool finder: The page with every tool and tick boxes for category, topic and budget. See it on Stacks
Pip: The tool bot at the bottom right. It answers in plain words and only suggests tools from Stacks. See it on Stacks
Trending: A researched guide to something people are trying right now, with the tools and the steps. See it on Stacks

Free: Everything that matters costs nothing. There may be a paid extra you never need. See it on Stacks
Freemium: A useful free tier, with paid plans for more space, features or seats. See it on Stacks
Paid: You pay to use it, once or by subscription. Most offer a free trial first. See it on Stacks
Open source: The code is public and anyone may read, change and share it under its licence. See it on Stacks
Licence: The terms that say what you may do with software or media. MIT and Apache 2.0 are permissive; GPL asks that changes stay open too.
Royalty-free: Pay once (or nothing) and use it again and again without paying per use. It still comes with a licence to read.
Self-hosted: You run the software on your own computer or server instead of the maker’s, so your data stays with you.

Alpha: An early build that works in parts. Expect missing features and bugs, and keep copies of your files.
Beta: Close to finished and open for testing. Mostly works, but may still change.
Clean-room: Rebuilt from public documents and observed behaviour, without copying the original’s code. See it on Stacks
Native app: Built for the operating system it runs on, rather than a web page wrapped in an app.
WebAssembly: A way to run fast, compiled code in a browser tab, so a desktop app can also work on the web.
Launcher: An app that opens other apps, or the home screen on a TV or phone.
Debloat: Switching off or removing the apps and services a device ships with that you don’t want. See it on Stacks

Vector: Artwork made of shapes and paths, so it stays sharp at any size. SVG is the common web format.
Raster: Artwork made of pixels, like a photo. JPG, PNG and WebP are raster formats.
PSD: Photoshop’s layered file. GIMP, Photopea and PhotoCraft can open it.
Raw file: The untouched data from a camera sensor, edited in apps like darktable or Lightroom.
Mockup: A ready-made scene, like a phone or a poster, you drop your design into to show it in place.
UI kit: A set of ready-made interface parts (buttons, forms, cards) to design or build with.
Design system: The shared rules, styles and components a team uses so every screen feels like one product.
Design tokens: Named values for colours, sizes and spacing that design and code both use.

Model: The AI that reads and writes text, images or sound, such as Claude or Llama.
Agent: An AI that takes steps on its own to finish a task, like searching, editing files or running commands.
Coding agent: An agent that works in your code, such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor.
Vibe coding: Building software by describing what you want to a coding agent and steering it, rather than writing every line.
AI skill: A folder of instructions and scripts that teaches an agent one job well, like making Word files or better pages. See it on Stacks
MCP: Model Context Protocol: a standard way to plug tools and data into an AI app. Stacks has its own MCP server. See it on Stacks
Prompt: What you type to an AI to tell it what you want.
Running locally: The AI model runs on your own computer, so nothing you type leaves it. Jan and Ollama do this.

End-to-end encryption: Only you and the person you talk to can read the messages; not even the service in between can.
Telemetry: Usage data an app sends back to its maker. Often on by default and worth switching off.
Tracker: Code on a site or in an app that follows what you do, often for ads.
ACR: Automatic content recognition: a smart TV feature that reports what you watch. See it on Stacks
VPN: A service that routes your connection through its own servers to hide where you are from the sites you visit.