Overview: What Is an AI Agent?

0.1 How Should We Think About AI Agents? When you first encounter an AI Agent, a natural question arises: "Is this just a tool, or is it something different?" People come to it with different expectations. Perspective Expectation What Goes Wrong in Practice A useful tool Press a button, get a result Starting with "just figure it out" → results don't match intent → disappointment A convenient automation Handles repetitive tasks for me Strong at simple repetition, but automation without context generates errors Something that does my job for me Do whatever I tell it to Accepting output without verification → quality incidents None of these perspectives are wrong. But relying on any one of them alone makes it hard to get real value from an AI Agent. 0.2 The Perspective of This Guide — AI Agent as a Collaboration Partner This guide treats the AI Agent as a cowork partner — a collaboration partner, not just a tool. A tool does exactly what it is told. An AI Agent, by contrast, reads context