Glossary
Agent
An LLM that plans and calls tools to accomplish a goal.
What it is
An agent uses an LLM to decide actions, call tools or APIs, observe results, and iterate toward a goal. Production agents add memory, guardrails, retries, and human-in-the-loop control.
Why it matters in production
Agents turn a model from an answer machine into a worker — but every capability you add is a failure mode you must bound: max steps, cost ceilings, validated tools, and a human checkpoint before irreversible actions.
In practice
A meeting-scheduling agent that looks up calendars (tool), proposes times, gets your confirmation (human-in-the-loop), then sends the invite (irreversible tool).
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Related terms
Production AI Notes
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