What is AI Agent?
An AI agent is a system that plans multi-step work and uses tools or APIs to complete a goal, instead of just answering one question.
An AI agent goes beyond conversation: give it an objective and it decides on the steps, calls tools to carry them out, checks the results, and iterates until the goal is met or it gives up. Practical examples include a coding agent that reads a repository, edits several files, and runs the tests; a support agent that looks up an order, issues a refund, and writes the reply; or a research agent that searches, reads, and compiles a briefing. The building blocks are a language model for reasoning, tool or API access for actions, memory for state, and guardrails for what it may do unsupervised. Agents fail differently from chatbots — errors compound across steps, so a wrong assumption early can produce confidently wrong work at the end. When evaluating agentic tools, look for step-by-step visibility, approval checkpoints before irreversible actions, and clear logs. Without those, an agent is difficult to trust with anything that touches customers or money.
Also known as
- autonomous agent
- agentic AI
- AI assistant
Related tools
- ChatGPT — The world's most popular AI assistant for conversation, coding, and analysis.
- Cursor — AI-first code editor that understands your entire project.
- Bardeen — Automate browser tasks like data scraping and form filling with AI.
- n8n — Open-source, self-hostable workflow automation for developers.
- Intercom Fin — AI customer support bot that resolves queries automatically.
Related terms
- Workflow Automation — Workflow automation is connecting apps so a trigger in one automatically runs steps in others, with no manual copying between tools.
- Large Language Model (LLM) — An LLM is an AI model trained on huge amounts of text that predicts language well enough to write, summarise, translate, and answer questions.
- API (Application Programming Interface) — An API is a defined way for one piece of software to request data or actions from another, and it is how AI tools plug into your stack.
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) — RAG is a technique where an AI tool searches your documents first, then writes an answer grounded in what it found.
Category: AI Concepts