AI Agent

An AI agent is a software system that perceives its environment, makes decisions, and takes actions autonomously to achieve a defined goal — without requiring step-by-step human direction. Unlike a simple model that responds to a single prompt, an agent operates in a loop: it reasons about its objective, selects tools or actions, executes them, observes the results, and iterates until the task is complete. Agents typically combine a large language model (LLM) as a reasoning engine with access to external tools such as APIs, databases, code interpreters, or other agents.

In commerce and enterprise settings, AI agents are deployed to handle complex, multi-step workflows that previously required human judgment — such as resolving a customer order dispute, researching and drafting a procurement proposal, or monitoring inventory and triggering reorder logic automatically. Their value lies in compressing high-effort processes into automated pipelines while retaining contextual reasoning. As agent frameworks mature, organizations are increasingly orchestrating networks of specialized agents that collaborate to execute end-to-end business processes with minimal human intervention.