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Glossary

AI Agent

Reviewed 9 April 2026 Canonical definition

An AI agent is an autonomous software system that uses a large language model as its reasoning engine to perceive its environment, plan actions, call tools, and complete tasks with minimal human intervention at each step. Unlike a simple AI assistant that responds to single queries, an agent maintains state across multiple steps, makes decisions based on intermediate results, and can trigger real-world effects through tool calls and API integrations.