A chatbot answers and stops. Give an agent a goal, like finding a dinner spot you can both get to by seven and booking it, and it works: checks the map, checks the calendar, compares options, books, and reports back.
The difference is not a smarter model. It is a loop wrapped around the same kind of model, plus permission to use tools.
The loop is the magic
Each cycle, the agent looks at what it has learned so far, picks the next action, runs it, and reads the result. Wrong turns get corrected mid-flight because the loop sees outcomes, not just intentions. A dead end becomes information about where to look next.
The loop is also why agents take time. A chatbot answers in seconds because it makes one pass. An agent might take minutes, because every step waits on the real world: pages load, calendars respond, bookings confirm. Watching one work looks less like magic and more like a very fast, very patient person running errands.
What agents still need
State, so progress is not lost mid-task. Tools, or the loop can only think in circles. Judgment about when to stop and ask, because autonomy without check-ins is how you get surprise bookings. The permissions post covers how that control should work.
Memory across steps matters more than raw brilliance here. An agent that forgets why it rejected the first restaurant will suggest it again at step nine. All the unglamorous machinery around the model, the saved progress, the tools, the checkpoints, is what turns a smart model into a competent worker.
Why this changes what AI is for
Answers are homework help. Actions are outcomes. When AI can finish tasks rather than describe them, the useful question shifts from what do I want to know to what do I want handled. That shift is what the word agent actually marks.
It also changes which skills pay off. Asking good questions was the skill of the chat era. The skill of the agent era is delegating well: saying what you want, what the constraints are, and what done looks like. People who can hand off work clearly are about to get a lot more done.