Cortexa Briefing · Free guide
AI 101.
A free 17-page primer from Cortexa Consulting: what AI really is, what makes it agentic, and how the pieces fit together. Four ideas in order, in language you could repeat to a client. No jargon, no hype, no email wall.
Download the guide
17 pages · Concepts, not product news — it ages slowly · free, no email wall
What's inside
Five short parts, in the order you'll need them.
01
What AI really is
A brilliant intern who read almost everything, and the two phases: training the brain, then using it.
02
What makes it agentic
Give the brain a body: the loop of plan, act, check that turns answers into finished work.
03
The model and its harness
The model thinks; the harness acts. Why the split matters when you evaluate tools.
04
How it all holds together
The dependency stack, and how one choice quietly commits you to the layers around it.
05
Key terms, plainly
The vocabulary worth knowing, defined so you could explain each one to a client.
A look inside
The same care as client work.
Plain-language pages in the Cortexa document system: dark section dividers, light content pages, and nothing that needs a glossary.
Who it's for
Written for the people doing the work.
- Leaders and client-facing teams who need a shared, honest vocabulary for AI conversations
- Anyone who has nodded along to "agentic" in a meeting and wants the real mechanics
- Teams about to evaluate AI tools who want the stack explained before the sales calls
Keep going
Where this guide leads.
Common questions
Straight answers.
- Is the primer really free?
- Yes. No email wall, no gate — download the PDF straight from this page. It's the same document our chat assistant can send you, and the same foundation our Cortexa Briefing sessions build on.
- Do I need any technical background?
- No. The primer holds to one test: could you repeat the explanation to a client and have it land? If a term needs a glossary, we chose a different term. The one glossary that does appear defines each entry in plain words.
- What's the difference between AI and agentic AI?
- A chatbot answers; an agent acts. Agentic AI gives the model a body — tools, memory and a loop of plan, act, check — so instead of telling you how to do a task, it works toward the finished result and hands it back.
- How is this different from the Getting Started guides?
- AI 101 is the concepts: what these systems are and how they fit together, tool-agnostic. The Getting Started guides are the practice: hands-on walkthroughs of Claude and ChatGPT. Read this one first if the vocabulary is new; skip straight to a Getting Started guide if you already know it.
- Will it go out of date?
- Slowly. It deliberately covers ideas rather than product news — model names and prices churn monthly, but what a model is, what a harness does and how the stack chains together have stayed stable. Where a passing fact does appear, trust the tools in front of you over any document.
Bring your team
Want it taught, not just read?
Cortexa Academy delivers this material as live, hands-on workshops, tailored to your stack and your policies.