Agent
An AI that chooses and takes steps towards a goal using actions a product gives it.
An AI agent works towards a goal by choosing and taking a sequence of actions. The product gives it actions to use and sets any points where it must stop or ask a person. The full sequence is not written in advance. The agent chooses its next step from what happened in the previous one.
Before Anne Hughes's annual review, an administrator asks the firm's AI product to update her plan values. Most arrive through provider feeds, but an old pension is off-feed. The agent finds no current value there, searches Anne's documents instead, and enters last year's amount as today's valuation. In the review meeting, Anne asks why the pension appears not to have grown.
The administrator gave the agent a goal, not those steps. The firm's usual process for an off-feed plan is to request a current valuation. A fixed workflow could create that task whenever a feed has no value. This agent could search documents and update the record, and chose that route instead. The firm needs to check the date and source of any value before relying on it. A product log may show the steps the agent took, but the firm must check what the product actually records.
Not to be confused with
- An automated workflow follows steps set in advance. A product sold as agentic may still run a fixed workflow with one AI step, such as drafting a summary.
- People call almost any AI product an AI tool. In this dictionary the word means something narrower, and its own entry says what.
- Agent, in this entry, means software. It has nothing to do with an agency code, an agency transfer, a tied agent, or acting as the client's agent under a letter of authority.
Overheard
Where did the agent get Anne's pension value?
From last year's statement, when the feed had nothing. Until our product can be set to stop and ask, I'm checking every value it enters against the document it came from, and that document's date.
Where it sits
Agent
- is part ofHarness
- works withModelToolPermissionHuman review
Copy this entry
Paste it into Word, Google Docs, Notion or Apple Notes. Headings and links come with it.
Sources
Your feedback
Could you explain agent to a colleague now?