EasyAI ML

What is an AI agent vs a prompt vs a chain?

1Give yourself 5 minutes

2Answer out loud, not in your head

3Then compare with the answer below

Reference answer

An AI agent is an LLM-driven system that can perceive, plan, and act in an environment over multiple steps, often using external tools, with persistent state. It differs from: (1) a prompt: one-shot generation with no feedback loop; (2) a chain: a static sequence of LLM calls without dynamic decision-making. The agent pattern has a planner (often the LLM itself in ReAct style), memory (short-term scratchpad + long-term store), tools (functions/APIs the agent can call), and a control loop (decide -> act -> observe -> repeat). "Agentic Ops" refers to monitoring, evaluating, and debugging agents in production, which is much harder than chat because actions can have side effects.

Then expect these follow-ups

What are common failure modes of agents in production?

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