Plain-language definitions of the key terms, protocols and concepts behind Ethora’s chat, AI and app-building platform.
Technology that enables machines to mimic human cognitive functions such as learning, problem-solving and decision-making. In Ethora, AI refers to automated conversational agents powered by large language models — chatbots and embeddable AI widgets that let developers build intelligent, conversational interfaces without extensive coding.
Read full entry →A set of rules and protocols that let different software applications communicate with each other. In Ethora, APIs let client applications interact with the backend server and integrate the platform with existing or custom-built systems, accessed via API keys from the Admin panel and documented through Swagger.
Read full entry →The process of connecting different software applications via APIs to enable seamless data exchange and functionality. In Ethora it is the route to deeper customization — syncing user accounts with legacy systems, or building a custom frontend on top of Ethora's backend infrastructure.
Read full entry →In Ethora, an App is an entity with one or more frontend components connected to a single backend context. Each App is an isolated server-side container with its own users, files, chats and data, managed by its owner through the Admin Panel or built on with Ethora's SDKs.
Read full entry →The user or organization that signs up for an Ethora account and maintains a project on the platform. App Owners have full administrative control through the Admin Panel — managing apps, configuring settings, viewing statistics, and granting team members granular access via ACL settings.
Read full entry →Everything that happens on the server side, out of sight of the end user. In Ethora the backend includes the API layer, chat server and application logic — a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) that lets teams focus on the frontend while leveraging pre-built server capabilities.
Read full entry →Automated software that holds a conversation with human users through text or voice. Modern chatbots work in three ways — rule-based scripted flows, retrieval systems that match inputs to pre-written responses, and generative systems that use large language models to produce answers dynamically — and are deployed across support, knowledge and enterprise use cases.
Read full entry →A pre-built collection of libraries, APIs, UI components and documentation that lets developers add real-time messaging to their apps without building a chat system from scratch. It bundles native client libraries, server-side message routing and storage, ready-made UI, and real-time protocols — saving months of engineering.
Read full entry →An automated program that systematically browses and extracts content from websites by following links and sitemaps. It parses HTML while respecting server constraints and organizes the data into a searchable index — valuable for building knowledge bases that give AI systems current, business-specific information.
Read full entry →A machine or infrastructure-as-a-service instance where an application runs separately from multi-tenant environments, giving the owner greater control over maintenance, scalability and security. Organizations choose it for stronger isolation, operational control and better SLAs, at a higher cost than shared hosting.
Read full entry →A technology or application that lets users store, access and manage digital assets. The term spans document wallets for personal or business records and crypto wallets based on cryptographic key pairs; in enterprise contexts, digital wallets often integrate messaging to streamline customer interactions.
Read full entry →A powerful open-source chat server from ProcessOne that implements the XMPP protocol for instant messaging. Built in Erlang, it provides reliable infrastructure for one-to-one and group chat at scale, though it typically needs custom extensions for user management, file attachments and push notifications.
Read full entry →A functional programming language built for concurrent, distributed and fault-tolerant systems. Developed by Ericsson in 1986, it can support millions of concurrent processes, making it especially well-suited to messaging, telecom and real-time chat applications at scale.
Read full entry →The client-side parts of an application that users see and interact with in a browser or on a device, as opposed to backend server-side operations. In Ethora, the frontend layer includes white-labelled iOS and Android apps, web apps and SDKs, so developers can deploy a UI without building it from scratch.
Read full entry →A Large Language Model — an AI system trained on vast amounts of text with billions or trillions of parameters to understand and generate human-like language. LLMs excel at generation, translation, summarization, question answering and code, and their packed knowledge lets them act as capable assistants across many applications.
Read full entry →A lightweight program that exposes a specific tool, data source or service to AI models via the Model Context Protocol. MCP servers let AI systems discover and use capabilities — tools for actions, resources for data, prompts for templates — without custom integration code, and typically run on your own infrastructure for security and vendor independence.
Read full entry →A reusable software package published to the Node Package Manager that encapsulates functionality or UI for JavaScript/TypeScript projects. These packages work across frontend frameworks and Node.js backends, shipping pre-built functionality with configuration, documentation, versioning and TypeScript support so developers don't rebuild features from scratch.
Read full entry →Retrieval-Augmented Generation — an AI technique that makes large language models more accurate by grounding responses in your own data. Instead of relying only on training data, RAG retrieves relevant documents from a knowledge base and adds them to the model's context before it answers, so the system “looks up” current, specific information.
Read full entry →A popular open-source JavaScript library from Meta for building user interfaces, especially for the web. Its component-based architecture and virtual DOM enable efficient rendering and reusable, stateful UI elements, and it extends to native iOS and Android apps through React Native.
Read full entry →A Service Level Agreement — a formal contract between a service provider and customer that defines the expected level of service with measurable standards and consequences for falling short. SLAs set clear expectations for availability and performance (such as uptime and support response times) and specify remedies like service credits when targets are missed.
Read full entry →Social Sign-On — an authentication method that lets users log in with existing credentials from services like Google, Facebook, Apple or LinkedIn. Built on OAuth 2.0, it authenticates through trusted identity providers, removing the need for separate usernames and passwords while improving both convenience and security.
Read full entry →A technology application that lets users securely store, organize and manage digital assets. A document wallet is a secure container for IDs, contracts and certificates that a user can store, share and digitally sign; unlike generic cloud storage it is purpose-built for verifiable documents and can use blockchain for immutable audit trails and cryptographic signatures.
Read full entry →A customizable software application that a business can brand and tailor as its own without building it from scratch. The name comes from the idea of a blank label a company fills with its own branding before reselling or integrating the product — letting businesses launch fully branded apps in minutes rather than months.
Read full entry →An open, decentralized and extensible messaging protocol for real-time communication and presence. Originally known as Jabber and evolving since 1999, it is widely used in chat apps, online gaming and IoT, and can also act as a signaling channel for features like video calls and screen sharing.
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From white-labelled apps to self-hosted chat servers and AI agents — talk to our team about the right setup for your project.
