AI Agents, Explained

An agent is a chatbot that can act: it plans, uses tools, looks at the result, and tries again. Here is the loop, the power, and where to keep it on a leash.

1. From Answering to Doing What turns a chatbot into an agent: handing the model real tools and the freedom to use them toward a goal instead of producing one reply.
2. The Act-Observe Loop The cycle at the heart of every agent: plan a step, act, observe the result, adjust, and repeat until the goal is met or it gets stuck.
3. Autonomy and Guardrails How much rope to give an agent: permissions, approvals, sandboxes, and human-in-the-loop, and how to match the leash to the stakes.