Agent (Agentic AI)

An agent is an LLM given a loop, memory, and a set of tools it can call, so it can plan multi-step work and take actions rather than just returning a single answer. "Agentic" describes a pattern along a spectrum — from a single tool call to a fully autonomous multi-step loop — not a strict on/off feature. The engineering that matters is less the model and more the guardrails, observability, and evals around the loop, since an agent that can act is also an agent that can act wrongly.

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