What is an AI agent?
By Yassine Seghrouchni, founderUpdated
In short
An AI agent is an AI system that carries out a series of steps on its own to reach a goal. It decides which actions are needed, uses other systems and tools to carry them out, and keeps going until the goal is met. The difference from a chatbot: an agent acts, a chatbot answers.
What makes something an agent?
It only makes sense to call something an agent when three things come together.
- A goal, not an instruction: not “summarise this email”, but “make sure this request is in the CRM with the right details”.
- It decides the steps: the agent chooses which actions are needed and in what order, instead of following a fixed script.
- Access to tools: the agent can look something up, call a system, read a file or create a record.
Why it matters in practice
An agent’s strength is also its risk: it takes steps without asking. So settle two things before you put one to work.
A person for irreversible actions: sending an email, posting an invoice or promising a customer something can’t be undone. Let the agent make a proposal and have someone approve it.
A narrow scope: an agent with access to five systems and twenty possible actions is impossible to oversee when something goes wrong. Start with one process, a few tools and clear limits. How to connect an agent to your systems safely is covered in connecting an AI agent to existing systems.
When don’t you need an agent?
More often than you’d think. If a task always follows the same steps, ordinary automation with an AI step in it is cheaper, faster and easier to check.
The rule of thumb: an agent only earns back its complexity when the order of steps differs from case to case and can’t be fixed in advance. More in AI agent or ordinary automation.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an AI agent and a chatbot?
A chatbot answers a question and waits for the next one. An agent gets a goal, works out which steps are needed, carries them out through connections to other systems and keeps going until the goal is met or it gets stuck. So an agent can change something in your systems; a chatbot can’t.
Are AI agents reliable enough for business processes?
For well-defined tasks with outcomes you can check, yes, as long as a person signs off on irreversible actions. The more steps an agent takes on its own, the more likely an error in step two carries through to step six. So keep the scope narrow and build in fixed points where a person reviews the work.
