# AI agent

> An AI agent is software that uses a language model to decide its own steps and use tools, such as booking or looking up data, to finish a task.

Canonical: https://heykiko.io/glossary/ai-agent
Last updated: 2026-11-05

## What it means

Also called agentic AI.

Where a chatbot only replies, an agent can act: it chooses whether to answer, look something up, ask a question or do something, such as booking a time or opening a request.

Because it can act, a good agent has limits: read-only access to data, important actions checked by the system, and a way to hand the conversation to a person.

**Example.** A customer asks “has my order shipped?”; the agent looks the order up and replies with its status.

## In HeyKiko

Kiko is an AI agent: it answers from your knowledge, books appointments, looks up live data, opens cases and hands chats to your team.

## Related

- [AI chatbot](https://heykiko.io/glossary/ai-chatbot)
- [Human hand-off](https://heykiko.io/glossary/human-handoff)
- [RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)](https://heykiko.io/glossary/rag)
- [AI agent vs chatbot](https://heykiko.io/blog/ai-agent-vs-chatbot)
- [Full glossary](https://heykiko.io/glossary)