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n. / Agents and tools
AI agent
Definition
An AI agent is a program that uses a language model to decide its own next steps, calling tools and reading the results until it reaches a goal or gives up. It differs from a single model call because it loops and acts.
In more detail
The model is the decision maker, and the tools are how it affects the world: searching, reading files, calling APIs, writing data. Because the path is not fixed in advance, two runs of the same request can take different routes, which is why you need a trace of each run to see what actually happened.
Example
You ask a coding agent to fix a failing test. It reads the test file, runs the tests, edits a function, runs the tests again and reports that they pass.
