What is an AI agent?
An AI agent is a program that decides its own next step. It is given a goal and a set of tools, and it chooses which tool to call, reads the result, and chooses again until it is done or it gives up. A workflow follows a path somebody drew. An agent picks the path.
A program given a goal and tools, choosing its own next step.
Why it matters to you
The distinction that matters commercially is not intelligence, it is who decides the order. A workflow is a sequence a person drew in advance, so you can read it and know what will happen. An agent selects at run time, which is the entire point and also the entire risk: the same input can take a different route on Tuesday than it did on Monday.
That makes agents right for work where the path genuinely varies, and wrong for anything irreversible. The useful design is usually both, with an agent doing the thinking and a plain deterministic worker doing anything that touches the outside world.
What it is not
A chatbot with one API call behind it is not an agent, and most things sold as agents are workflows with a model in one step.
Where this turns up in something OCTYN runs
Each line carries the date it was recorded and where it came from.
- 2026-09-14
On the aarttsii outreach system a reasoning session finds, scores and drafts, and a stdlib-only Python service under systemd is the only thing allowed to send
docs/growth/case-studies/aarttsii.md, section 5
If a proposal used this word and did not explain it, ask.
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