Agentic Systems Vocabulary

an AI system that uses a model, tools, and an execution loop to pursue a goal with some degree of autonomy

“The agent decomposed the goal, used tools, checked the results, and requested approval before publishing.”

a model or agent selecting and requesting external functions, APIs, or services

“Tool use let the assistant request a web search and a calculator instead of inventing current facts or arithmetic.”

a protocol where a model returns a structured request to call a named function; the host application typically validates and executes it

“The model requested `get_weather` with a city argument, and the application executed the function.”

Reasoning + Acting; a pattern that interleaves task reasoning with actions and observations from tools or an environment

“A ReAct loop searched, inspected the result, and then chose the next action.”

the ability to formulate a sequence of actions to achieve a future goal

“Strategic planning lets the agent handle complex, long-horizon tasks.”

the process of analyzing past actions to improve future performance

“Through reflection, the agent corrected its own coding error.”

systems for storing and retrieving information over time

“Long-term memory allows the agent to recall user preferences.”

systems involving multiple interacting agents with distinct roles

“A multi-agent team of research, writing, and editing agents wrote the paper.”

coordinating multiple models, tools, and steps into one working system

“The orchestration layer routed easy tickets to a small model and hard ones to a large one.”

a helper agent spawned by another agent to handle a subtask

“The planner spun up a subagent just to verify the citations.”

a temporary workspace for plans, calculations, notes, or intermediate state used while completing a task

“The scratchpad held the agent's plan, calculations, and pending tool results.”

assigning a task to another agent or tool better suited to it

“Sensible delegation sent the arithmetic to a calculator instead of the language model.”

many simple agents cooperating without central control

“A swarm of crawler agents mapped the site in minutes.”

an agent operating software through the screen, keyboard, and mouse like a person

“With computer use, the agent filed the expense report in the same web app humans use.”

an open standard letting AI applications plug into external tools and data sources

“Exposing the database through the Model Context Protocol let any assistant query it safely.”