What an agent actually is

What an agent actually is
A first-principles definition of an AI agent: control loops, tools, state, and decisions, and what agent frameworks are really doing underneath their abstractions.
Author

Yee Seng Chan

Published

2026 · April 5

The series replaces the “Agent” definition question with an autonomy spectrum, then opens up what frameworks actually do underneath: the model emits, the API parses, your code dispatches and loops. The point is to know what kind of agent you have, and how it actually works.

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