What is an Agent?
An AI system that can perceive its environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve goals autonomously.
Pronunciation: /ˈeɪdʒənt/
Agent explained in plain English
An AI agent is a system designed to pursue goals independently. Unlike a simple chatbot that only responds to prompts, an agent can plan steps, use tools (search the web, run code, query databases), observe results, and adjust its approach — much like a person working through a task.\n\nAgents combine language models with reasoning loops and tool access to handle complex, multi-step workflows.
Analogy
An AI agent is like a personal assistant who does not just answer questions but actually picks up the phone, makes reservations, and follows up — taking initiative to complete tasks rather than waiting for the next instruction.
Example
How is Agent used?
Agents are used for automated research, code generation and debugging, customer service workflows, data analysis pipelines, and personal productivity tools.
Common misconceptions about Agent
Agents are not fully autonomous or infallible. They can make errors, get stuck in loops, and require human oversight for important decisions.
History
AI agents evolved from early expert systems through reinforcement learning agents (DeepMind's game-playing AI) to today's LLM-powered agents with tool use (2023–present).
Related terms
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- LLM
A type of AI model trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate human language.
- MCP
An open protocol that lets AI models connect to external tools, data sources, and services.
- Prompt
The input text or instruction given to an AI model to guide its response.
- act
A stage in the agentic loop in which the agent executes the action chosen during the reason stage.
- action
In reinforcement learning, the mechanism by which the agent transitions between states of the environment.
- action space
The set of resources an agent can use to perform a task.
- agent orchestration
The centralized management and routing of tasks across multiple sub-agents or LLM calls.
- agentic
The adjective form of agent.
- agentic loop
A cycle that an agent iterates through until a termination condition is met.
- agentic workflow
A dynamic process in which an agent autonomously plans and executes actions to achieve a goal.