# What does an AI agent actually do?

An AI agent is a program that decides its own next step. It is given a goal and a set of actions it can take, and it chooses which action to run, 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.

Also called: agent, agentic system
Checked: 2026-09-27

In one line

A program given a goal and a set of actions, 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 it turns up in something we run

- On the craft retailer's outreach system a reasoning session finds, scores and drafts, and a small service with no browser or model is the only thing allowed to send (recorded 2026-09-27)

## Next to this

- [Orchestration](https://octyn.co/glossary/orchestration)
- [Human in the loop](https://octyn.co/glossary/human-in-the-loop)
- [Hallucination](https://octyn.co/glossary/hallucination)

## Argued out at length

- [What production ready means for an AI system](https://octyn.co/compare/production-ready-ai-system)
- [Why your AI automation broke and nobody noticed](https://octyn.co/compare/ai-automation-failing-silently)
- [AI agent developer or a systems firm](https://octyn.co/compare/ai-agent-developer-or-systems-firm)

## Related

- [What production ready means for an AI system](https://octyn.co/compare/production-ready-ai-system)
- [Orchestration](https://octyn.co/glossary/orchestration)
- [The Consult](https://octyn.co/consult)

Canonical: https://octyn.co/glossary/ai-agent