Defining Agents: Complexity, Autonomy, and Design Shape Their Essence

The concept of an 'agent' remains complex and open to interpretation, raising questions about its meaningfulness versus being a mere marketing term. Despite the hype, agents are essential for developing compound AI systems that require advanced scaffolding beyond simple prompting. Various factors determine the complexity of an agent, including the challenge of the environment it operates in—ranging from simple chatbots to more sophisticated web agents—and the difficulty of the tasks it faces, which may involve multiple stakeholders and long time frames. Moreover, the level of autonomy granted to the agent is critical; agents can either be closely monitored or allowed the freedom to make decisions based on high-level goals. Additionally, the design patterns employed, such as the ability to use tools, reflect, or plan, contribute to the agent’s capabilities. Overall, rather than a strict binary classification, the degree of agentic behavior increases with the richness of these factors.