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AI Agent

Software that takes a goal, uses an LLM to plan how to reach it, calls tools as needed, and continues until the goal is met or it gives up. The unit of work in agentic AI. In 2026, production agents typically run on Claude Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5, or Gemini 3.1 Pro.

How it works

An agent receives a goal (often a user message), passes it to the LLM along with available tools and conversation history, the LLM decides whether to respond directly or call a tool, the runtime executes any tool call and feeds the result back, and the loop continues until the LLM stops or hits a step limit.

Example

A sales prospecting agent that researches an inbound lead in your CRM, enriches with firmographic data from Clearbit, scores against ICP criteria, drafts a personalised outreach email referencing recent company news, and books a meeting if the lead replies positively.

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