semantic-kernel
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 SKILLS.
Ask - What a user requests to the Semantic Kernel to help achieve the user’s goal.
- “We make ASKs to the SK”
Skill - A domain-specific collection made available to the SK as a group of finely-tuned functions.
- “We have a SKILL for using Office better”
Function - A computational machine comprised of Semantic AI and/or native code that’s available in a SKILL.
- “The Office SKILL 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.
