I think “agent” may finally have a widely enough agreed upon definition to be useful jargon now
September 22, 2025
Tools in a loop to achieve a goal
#An LLM agent runs tools in a loop to achieve a goal. Let’s break that down.The “tools in a loop” definition has been popular for a while—Anthropic in particular have settled on that one. This is the pattern baked into many LLM APIs as tools or function calls—the LLM is given the ability to request actions to be executed by its harness, and the outcome of those tools is fed back into the model so it can continue to reason through and solve the given problem.“To achieve a goal” reflects that these are not infinite loops—there is a stopping condition.
Source: I think “agent” may finally have a widely enough agreed upon definition to be useful jargon now
We frequently cite Simon Willison here at Elsewhere. He has for years now been wanting one of the leading voices on AI engineering. So when someone as experienced as Simon has expressed reservations about a term like “agent,” we should really pay attention.
Ben has finally decided on a definition he feels comfortable with, and here he explores the term “agent” in detail.
