Glossary term

Agent

An AI system that plans and takes multi-step actions, often by calling tools, to achieve a goal.

How it works

An AI agent is a system built around a model that can pursue a goal over several steps. It decides what to do next, uses tools such as search or code execution, looks at the results and keeps going until it finishes or gets stuck.

The model supplies the reasoning; the surrounding software supplies the tools, memory and safety limits.

The agent loop

In code

A minimal agent loop

history = [{"role": "user", "content": goal}]
for _ in range(10):                      # step limit for safety
    reply = model(history)
    if reply.tool_call is None:
        print(reply.text)                # finished
        break
    result = run_tool(reply.tool_call)   # act
    history.append({"role": "tool", "content": result})