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AI agent
An AI agent is a system that can plan a sequence of steps and take actions toward a goal with limited ongoing human direction, rather than only responding to one request at a time.
Prerequisite: AI assistant
What matters
The defining trait is autonomy over multiple steps: an agent can decide what to do next based on the outcome of its previous action, not just answer a single prompt.
Example
An agent asked to 'research three competitors and draft a comparison' might search the web, read pages, and write a document across several self-directed steps.
Common misconception
An AI agent is not simply a chatbot with a longer response; the key difference is multi-step, self-directed action, not verbosity.
Recall question
What makes a system an agent rather than a single-turn assistant?
Keywords and related concepts
AI agentautonomymulti-step planningai assistant