scaffolding

Definitions

1. The orchestration code surrounding an LLM that provides structure, tool access, memory, and control flow to transform a raw language model into a functional application. Includes prompt templates, retrieval pipelines, output parsers, and agent loops. Frameworks like LangChain and LlamaIndex are primarily scaffolding.

   In plain English: The supporting code built around an AI model that gives it the ability to actually do useful things, like search the web or remember previous conversations.

   Example: The model itself is only about 10% of this project — the rest is scaffolding for tool use, error recovery, and conversation memory.

Related Terms

• Greenfield
• Boilerplate
• Prompt Engineering
• SDK
• Chain of Thought
• Gating Network
• SwiGLU