[readyplayernull]

I like this distinction from automation by Bartosz Pucek:

At its core, an Agent is software that can:

    Take in a task description

    Break it down into steps

    Execute those steps using available tools

    Adapt its approach based on feedback

The key distinction from traditional automation: Agents handle variance and uncertainty by replanning rather than failing when their happy path breaks.

Source: https://newsletter.pucek.com/p/2025-the-state-of-ai-agents-a...

[alper]

This seems impossibly broad. Realistically an agent would only be able to take tasks for whatever limited domain it can execute on.

So either every approach it does has to be hard coded or it would be able to use a bunch of very generic modules to plan and execute an approach.

[davidgerard]

so is there a real checkable example of one that's doing work?