Definition
An AI agent is a program that uses a language model to decide which steps to take toward a goal, and can call tools to carry those steps out.
In practice
The difference between an agent and a chatbot is not intelligence, it is agency. A chatbot answers; an agent acts, by calling tools such as reading a mailbox, fetching a page, or writing a file, and by deciding for itself which to call next. That loop of decide, act, observe, repeat is the whole idea. What people usually get wrong is assuming an agent needs to be autonomous to be useful. Most agents that earn their keep are narrow and repetitive: one job, on a schedule, producing one deliverable. The ambitious general-purpose assistant is the version that stays a prototype.
Example
A consultant sets up an agent to prepare her for client calls. Every weekday at 7am it reads the day's calendar, looks up each attendee's company site and recent news, checks the last email thread with them, and writes a one-page brief to her inbox. Nothing in that loop is scripted step by step: the agent decides which pages to open and when it has enough. The job is narrow, which is exactly why it keeps working.
Common questions about AI agent
What is the difference between an AI agent and a chatbot?
A chatbot answers the message in front of it and stops. An AI agent works toward a goal: it decides which step comes next, calls tools such as a browser, a mailbox, or a file system to carry that step out, looks at the result, and repeats until the job is done or it gets stuck.
Does an AI agent need to be fully autonomous to be useful?
No. The AI agents that earn their keep are usually narrow: one recurring job, a fixed schedule, and one deliverable such as a brief or a triaged inbox. Full autonomy is optional, and many useful agents pause for a human to approve anything that sends, spends, or deletes.
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