AI Agent / Agentic
AI Agent
A system that carries out a task on the user's behalf by itself: the model decides which step to take and which tool to use. Anthropic draws the line clearly: in a workflow the steps live in predefined code; in an agent the model directs its own process and tool use.
AI and GrowthTerm 67 / 81
In practice
For growth, an agent is less a product feature than a decision about authority: it sets which step of the funnel (acquisition, activation, retention) you hand to whom, and with how much autonomy (our reading). Anthropic and OpenAI start from the same place: the simplest solution first. Anthropic says outright that this might mean not building an agentic system at all. OpenAI recommends agents in three situations: complex decisions, rule sets that have become hard to maintain, and unstructured data. Before handing a growth step to an agent, ask: would a fixed workflow do it just as well, for less?