Glossary · 5 · Building with AI: APIs, tools and agents
AI agent
Also known as: Agentic AI, Autonomous agent
An AI agent is a system in which a language model pursues a goal over several steps on its own — planning, calling tools, observing the results and deciding what to do next — until the task is done or it needs human input.
- Intermediate
- Technical writers
- Technical marketers
- Technical project managers
- Developers
In one sentence
AI agents explained: language models that plan, use tools and act over several steps — what they can do and where humans must stay in control.
Example
A documentation agent receives a change request, finds affected topics, drafts updates in a branch, runs the style checker and opens a review request for the writer.
Explained in context
Context cards connect this term with others to answer one question. Also in British English and German.
Why it matters on your learning path
- Technical writers: Agents will take over routine content maintenance; writers define the rules, review the output and own the result.
- Technical marketers: “Agentic” is a hyped label. Ask what the system decides on its own and what it can change.
- Technical project managers: Define scope, permissions, stop conditions and approval points before an agent touches production systems.
- Developers: Start with narrow, well-evaluated agents; log every step for traceability.
Agent vs. assistant
An assistant answers one request at a time and the user decides the next step. An agent chains steps itself. Many products sit in between — see agentic workflow.