ICT stands for Inner Circle Trader, the pseudonym of the author whose teaching material gave its name to a whole direction inside Smart Money. It is neither an organisation nor a standard but a tradition of exposition: a set of concepts, labels and typical scenarios spread through video courses and retellings.
The comparison of ICT with the general SMC vocabulary is covered separately — this is about the direction itself: where it came from and what belongs to it.
Where it came from
The foundation is the same as all of Smart Money, and largely Wyckoff's legacy: a range, a pierce of an obvious level, a move the other way. What was new is the delivery: detailed terminology, names for individual situations, step-by-step schemes.
Because of how it spread, the direction has a feature Wyckoff's does not: there is no single canonical text. The material is scattered across many hours of recordings and retellings of varying accuracy, so definitions of the same concept diverge between sources. Worth bearing in mind when two sources contradict each other: often the argument is not about the market but about what was actually said.
What belongs to ICT
Attachment to time and sessions. The most prominent part. The claim is that certain hours behave differently: session opens have their own character, particular windows their own role.
This is a fundamentally different kind of claim from everything else in Smart Money. Geometry is checked on the chart: a break either exists or does not. "This hour is special" cannot be checked on a chart — it can only be measured statistically, per instrument, and the result does not transfer from one market to another.
Named scenarios. Dedicated names for specific combinations of events: a pierce at the open, a return into a zone, an entry after a change of structure. A useful part of the vocabulary, until the names start replacing the description.
Daily and weekly templates. Assumptions about a typical timetable: where within a day or a week the extremes usually land. Again a claim about schedule, not about geometry.
What to read with caution
The time attachment is the only part of the direction that requires measurement rather than markup. Before relying on it, it is worth asking: on which instrument, over what period of history, and with what result was this checked.
The absence of such a check does not make the claim false — it makes it unverified. The difference matters: geometry can be re-checked in a minute, a timetable cannot.
Where people get confused
Assuming ICT terms are standard. Someone looks for a "kill zone" in the general SMC vocabulary and does not find it: the concept is not there.
Mistaking an abundance of terms for depth. Most of the vocabulary consists of names for objects already known; the direction has less content of its own than it has terms.
Transferring time windows between markets. Hours that mean something for one instrument mean nothing for another: a round-the-clock market and one with session hours have different natures.
Where to start
With the objects, not the vocabulary. Structure, pierce, break, zone — understand those and any glossary reads in an evening, and it becomes obvious that a new term usually hides a familiar object. The correspondences are easiest to read as a table.