Most conversations about AI in business are still focused on chatbots and automation triggers — useful tools that respond to prompts or fire when conditions are met. AI agents are something meaningfully different. Given a goal, an AI agent plans the steps required to reach it, executes those steps using the tools available to it, adapts when something unexpected happens, and delivers a completed outcome — without being prompted for each individual action along the way. This distinction is not technical nuance. It’s the difference between a tool that makes you faster and a system that handles work while you focus elsewhere.