What is an AI agent, in plain words
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An AI agent is a language model that can take actions: it reads a task, decides which tool to call (search, email, a database), looks at the result and repeats until the task is done. A chatbot only answers. An agent does the work.
How an agent differs from a chatbot
A chatbot gets a question and returns text. An agent gets a goal, such as “reply to every invoice email”, and works in a loop: plan a step, call a tool, check what came back, plan the next step.
The tools are ordinary functions you write: search the inbox, read a file, create a deal in the CRM. The model decides when to call them and with which arguments.
Where agents break
Three things fail most often. A tool returns an error and the agent keeps calling it. The agent forgets what it already did. Or it spends far more on API calls than the task is worth.
Each has a known fix: a retry budget per tool, a short memory of past steps and a hard spending cap per run.
What you can automate first
Start with work that repeats daily and has a clear “done”: sorting mail, filling a CRM from call notes, weekly reports from a spreadsheet. Avoid tasks where a mistake is expensive until the agent has a log you trust.