AI Agent
Also called LLM agent, agentic system, autonomous agent.
An AI agent is a system in which a language model dynamically directs its own process and tool use in a loop, deciding what actions to take based on environment feedback until a task is complete.
Description
Anthropic's widely cited taxonomy distinguishes agents from workflows, in which model calls and tools follow predefined code paths. Agents trade predictability and cost for flexibility on open-ended tasks.
Sources
- Anthropic (2024). Building effective agents.
Cite this entry
Protologue. (2026). AI Agent. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.0.0, PTL-0063). https://protologue.com/t/ai-agent/
BibTeX
@misc{protologue_ai_agent,
title = {AI Agent},
author = {{Protologue}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques, v1.0.0},
note = {Entry PTL-0063},
url = {https://protologue.com/t/ai-agent/}
}