What an agent is

0:00 By the summer, I expect that many people who work with frontier AI systems will feel as though they live in a parallel world to people who don't. That's Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic. In a lot of ways, it already feels like that. Largely due to AI agents. We've hit an inflection point where agents can handle complex tasks autonomously. And you don't need a technical background to build them anymore. They're becoming accessible to anyone willing to experiment.

0:28 But good information is hard to find. So there's still confusion and friction. Learning now gives you a real advantage. In this video, I'm covering what agents actually are, what's possible right now, and how to build them, even if you're starting from scratch. I'll explain the basics, then build two agents step-by-step using two leading platforms. First, a quick refresher for those new here. An AI agent is a system that can reason, plan, and take actions on its own, based on information it's given.

1:07 Think of it like a digital employee that can think, remember, and get things done. That's different from a chatbot or an automation. A chatbot answers questions. An agent takes your goal and delivers a result. An automation follows fixed steps. An agent reasons and chooses actions based on context. To pull this off, an agent has three core components. The brain, and LLM capable of multi-step reasoning and planning. Memory. This can be both short-term context and long-term knowledge it can reference.

1:43 And tools. Integrations that let it take actions on your behalf. This is how it actually interacts with the world and accomplishes its tasks. So I do think 2026 is the year of AI agents, but with some nuance around what that actually means. Right now, generally agents aren't replacing entire roles.