Technology in plain words: a little map of tools — what’s for what

You don’t have to know how to use these tools. But when you build something with AI or with a team, a few names keep coming up: “I’ll save it in Markdown”, “I’ll write a script in Python — A popular, readable programming language — The Craft’s default for scripts, data and the back end. A proven default: lots of ready tools and libraries, easy to drive with AI.”, “I’ll put the data in a database”. It sounds like jargon — and it’s simply different tools for different jobs, like a hammer and a screwdriver in one box.

This article is a little map of that box. Not so you reach for the tools yourself, but so you know what’s for what — and can decide, ask and understand what’s going on, deliberately. Two of them are worth knowing especially: Markdown (.md) and Python. We’ll start with those.

Markdown (.md) — plain text that formats itself

Markdown is a way of writing plain text so that simple characters produce formatting. Asterisks around a word make it bold, a # at the start of a line makes a heading, a dash makes a list item. You write in something as simple as Notepad, and on screen you get a nicely laid-out document. A file with such text ends in .md.

It’s like a recipe written by hand, in clear handwriting: all you need is a pen and paper, and everyone still understands where the title is, where the ingredients are, and where the steps. No complicated editor, no hidden settings.

Why should a business person even know this? Because Markdown has three qualities that count:

It’s eternal. You’ll open a .md file in ten years on any computer. It’s plain text — it won’t age like a document made in a program nobody uses anymore.
It’s light and portable. You’ll email it, drop it into a repository, paste it anywhere. It weighs next to nothing and looks the same everywhere.
AI loves it. Assistants like Claude read and write Markdown best. That’s why notes, instructions and project rules are kept in .md — including the famous CLAUDE.md file, the “project constitution” we write about in the Day 0 guide.

In short: when you hear “I’ll save it in Markdown”, it means “I’ll save it in a simple, durable text file that anyone — human and AI — will read with ease”. This whole page you’re reading was also built from .md files. (The common syntax standard is CommonMark — there you’ll find a cheat sheet of all the characters.)

Python — a Swiss army knife for “background work”

Python is a programming language — that is, a way of giving the computer commands. It stands out in one way: it’s readable almost like English sentences. Where other languages scare you with brackets and symbols, Python reads almost like a list of steps. That’s why it’s The Craft’s default choice wherever you need to compute, process or automate something. (Home page and installer: python.org.)

Think of it as a back-office worker who doesn’t show up to customers, but does the dirty work: rewrites a thousand records from one file to another, sends a report every morning, cleans up a mess in the data, connects your app to the payment service. Boring, repetitive tasks that a human would do for hours and with mistakes — Python does in seconds, the same way every time.

Where specifically you’ll meet Python in business practice:

Automation. “Every month collect data from the shop and make a summary of it” — that’s a typical script in Python, written once and then running by itself.
Data and analysis. Tidying spreadsheets, merging lists, computing statistics — Python handles data that makes Excel start to groan.
Artificial intelligence. Most AI tools speak Python. If you plan something with AI “under the hood”, Python is almost certainly in play.
App back end. The part of the logic that happens on the server — logging in, orders, connections to other services — is often exactly in Python.

The most important intuition: Python isn’t the app’s looks, it’s its efficient back office. The customer won’t see it — but it’s what makes things “just happen”.

The rest of the map — briefly, what else you’ll hear

Markdown and Python are two tools worth recognizing by name. But there’s more in the box. Here’s the rest of the map in a nutshell — not to memorize, just so the names stop scaring you.

JavaScript and the browser. What happens on the screen: clickable buttons, menus, animations. If Python works in the back office, JavaScript is on the floor — serving the guest you can see. (Manual and documentation: MDN Web Docs.)
Database (SQL — The query language for a database — the way you “ask” the database for data or change it. The universal standard for talking to a database. A badly written query can bog down the whole app.). An orderly store of your company’s information: customers, orders, invoices. Like a large, well-labelled cabinet with drawers — every thing has its place and can be found in a flash. The language of questions to that cabinet is called SQL.
Git. The project’s time machine. It records who changed what and when, and lets you go back to any earlier version. We write about its “save points” (commits) in the glossary in action; the full free manual is Pro Git.
Terminal (command line). The black window where you type commands instead of clicking. It looks scary, and it’s simply another way of giving commands — faster for someone who knows what they’re typing.
File formats: .json, .csv, .pdf. Different “wrappers” for data. .csv is a table (like a spreadsheet), .json is an orderly list of information that programs and APIs like, and .pdf is a document to read and print. The choice of format depends on who is to read it afterwards — a human or a machine.

You don’t have to remember them all. It’s enough that when a name comes up, you roughly know which shelf in the box someone is reaching for.

What you really need from this

The most important message is: as a business person you don’t have to use any of these tools yourself. That’s what a team or AI is for. Your role is something else — to know what’s for what, so you can:

make decisions (“let’s keep notes in Markdown, because they’ll survive for years”),
talk without misunderstandings (“that’s back-office work, in Python” — and you already know the customer won’t see it),
sense when something sounds off (“you want to keep customer data in a text file instead of a database? that’s probably the wrong shelf”).

The rest is detail you can safely leave to the specialists — human or digital. And if you want to get a proper grip on the glossary of terms that keep recurring, we have a full glossary in plain words and a cheat sheet of ten words from the AI.

In short

Markdown (.md) is plain, durable text that formats itself nicely — perfect for notes, instructions and project rules. Human and AI read it effortlessly.
Python is a readable language for “background work”: automation, data, AI and the app’s back office. The customer doesn’t see it, but it’s what makes things happen.
You don’t have to operate these tools — it’s enough to know what’s for what. Then decisions are sharper, conversations clearer, and the jargon stops intimidating.