There is no universal definition of an agent. And right now, that’s not a bad thing. But directionally, leaders in the field are converging on a few common themes around agents. They say that an agent is:
- Software that uses AI and tools to accomplish a goal requiring multiple steps (Shah, 2024)
- Systems where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they accomplish tasks (Schlundtz and Zhang, 2024)
- An application that attempts to achieve a goal by observing the world and acting upon it using the tools that it has at its disposal (Wiesinger, Marlow and Vuskovic, 2025)
Simply put, an agent has agency. So what is agency?
- Agency refers to the capacity of an agent to act independently, make decisions, and achieve goals using reasoning, tools, and available information.
And with this, let me throw another definition on this common ground of agency:
- An agent is an application that accomplishes a goal independently of human intervention.
There are three important parts to this definition:
- Application. It’s technology. A piece of software.
- Goal. It has an objective to get something done.
- Independent. It can operate autonomously to achieve its stated goal.
However, how one builds the application, defines the goal and achieves independence varies widely amongst software vendors. And that’s okay. But before jumping directly into the implementation details, there are elements of “agent design” that we need to align on within the context of applications, goals and independence. So let’s do that.
