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Plain-language AI glossary

Term 10TechniquesMeaning / context / connections

Techniques / Definition

AI Agent

An AI system that can autonomously plan, reason, use tools, and take actions to accomplish goals with minimal human intervention.

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01

MeaningThe one-sentence definition.

02

ContextHow the idea works in practice.

03

UsesWhere the concept becomes useful.

01 / Plain-language context

How AI Agent works.

AI agents go beyond simple chatbots by maintaining state, using tools, and making multi-step plans. An agent might: (1) Receive a goal ("book me the cheapest flight to Paris next month"), (2) Search flights using an API, (3) Compare options, (4) Ask clarifying questions, (5) Book the selected flight. Frameworks like LangChain, CrewAI, and OpenAI's Agents SDK help build agents. The key challenge is reliability: agents must handle errors, ambiguity, and unexpected states gracefully.

02 / Practical uses

Where it helps.

  1. 01Customer service automation
  2. 02Data analysis pipelines
  3. 03Code generation assistants
  4. 04Research automation
03 / Keep exploring
Function Calling (Tool Use)An AI capability where the model can decide to invoke external functions or APIs based on the conversation context.RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)A technique that enhances AI responses by retrieving relevant information from a knowledge base before generating an answer.MCP (Model Context Protocol)An open standard by Anthropic that provides a universal way for AI models to connect to external data sources and tools.Prompt EngineeringThe practice of crafting effective instructions for AI models to produce desired outputs consistently.