Short Definition
An AI agent is a system that uses a model to choose actions, call tools, and make progress toward a goal over multiple steps.
Intuition
An agent is not just a chatbot response. It can plan, inspect results, use tools, and adapt the next action.
Technical Definition
An agent couples a policy or language model with state, tools, control flow, memory, and stopping criteria to execute tasks in an environment.
Example
A coding agent reads files, edits code, runs tests, and iterates on failures.
Common Misunderstandings
An agent is a system design pattern, not only a model capability.
More autonomy increases the need for permissions, monitoring, and rollback.