What is an AI agent?
An AI agent is a system that uses a language model to plan and take actions toward a goal, calling tools, reading results and deciding the next step in a loop, rather than just answering a single question.
The difference between a chatbot and an agent is autonomy over multiple steps. Given a goal like "find the bug and fix it", an agent breaks it into steps, uses tools (a shell, a browser, an MCP server) to gather information and make changes, checks the outcome, and repeats until the goal is met or it gets stuck. The model is the reasoning engine; the agent is the loop around it.
Agents range from focused coding assistants that edit your repo and open pull requests, to research agents that crawl dozens of sources and write cited reports, to general workspaces that can run shell commands and browse the web unattended.
The strongest agents pair a capable model with good tools and tight feedback: small, reviewable steps beat one giant leap. Many of the agents here are open source and install in a couple of commands.
Popular agents
All Agents →Type
- Claude CodeAnthropic's agentic coding tool that lives in your terminal and understands your whole codebase.this week
- AiderAI pair programming in your terminal, git-native8 weeks ago
- Gemini CLIGoogle's open-source AI agent that brings Gemini into your terminal for coding and automation.this week
- OpenAI Codex CLIOpenAI's open-source coding agent that runs in your terminal and edits, runs and tests code.this week
- opencodeAn open-source AI coding agent built for the terminal, model-agnostic and fully scriptable.this week
- OpenHandsPlatform for software development agents that write real codetoday
FAQ
What's the difference between an agent and an MCP server?
The agent is the decision-maker running the loop; MCP servers are the tools it calls. An agent becomes far more capable when you connect the right servers.
Are AI agents safe to run unattended?
Give them scoped permissions and review their changes. Coding agents that work in git let you inspect every diff before it lands.