AI Agents
An AI agent decides its own next action instead of following a fixed script. What that means in practice, and what changes once more than one agent is involved.
- AI Agent — is a system where a model decides its own next action in a loop, using tools, until the task is done — not a fixed script.
- Agentic AI — describes how much control a system hands to the model over deciding what happens next — a spectrum, not a yes-or-no label.
- Agentic Workflow — has a fixed sequence of steps written in code, with the model making a real decision at one or more specific points along the way.
- Multi-Agent System — splits a task across several agents working at once instead of one agent handling it alone — faster, but at real added cost.
- Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A) — A2A lets one AI agent ask a completely different agent, built by another team or vendor, to do something, without custom integration code for that pairing.