What is an AI agent, and do I need one?
An agent is a model given tools and permission to take multi-step actions rather than only produce text. Most businesses asking for one actually need a reliable workflow — deterministic, auditable, and cheaper — and should reach for an agent only where the path genuinely varies case to case.
Agents are a good fit for research, triage across messy inputs, and tasks where the next step depends on what was just found. They are a poor fit for anything that must happen identically every time, where a plain workflow is more predictable and easier to debug.
The practical constraint is permissions. Anything allowed to act on your systems needs limits, logging, and a human checkpoint on consequential actions.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026