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An Overview of AI Agents for Beginners

Danni Liu

• 2 min read
Laptop on table showing AI agent demo with Donna saying “Hi Danni, What’s the ask? Donna’s already on it.” Text overlay: “An Overview of AI Agents for Beginners.”

Heard of AI Agents but not sure what they are or how they differ from chatbots? Same.

When I first tried to learn about them, I was overwhelmed. Many articles I came across were very techical, it's filled with terms like "orchestration layers" and "reasoning loops."
Honestly, it felt like I was reading some sort of rocket science manual. All I wanted was to understand:

What are AI agents? Why does everyone keep talking about them, and should I care?

Why is it so hard?!

If you're confused and overwhelmed like I was, this post is for you.
Here's my plain-English take on it. We'll cover:

  • What is AI Agents
  • Why they're suddenly in the spotlight
  • Benefits and pitfalls
  • The anatomy of AI Agents

What is an AI Agent?

An analogy helps here.

Imagine you need to plan a business trip to London, but you’re swamped at work. Luckily, your company has an AI travel agent service.
Let’s call it Donna (yes, that Donna, for the Suits fans).

You type:

⌨️
“Donna, I need you to organize my trip to London. I’ll be there 20–25 September. Please book accommodation within 5 km of the office.”

Because Donna understands natural language, she can break down the task into steps:

  • Check your calendar

  • Map out where you’ll need to be

  • Find relevant flights and hotels

  • Share the plan with you

  • Book everything once you approve

That’s the essence of an AI agent. It doesn’t just respond to your request. It reasons, plans, and acts by interacting with its environment.

Hmm...How is it different from a chatbot?

I had the same question. Let me answer with another analogy.
Think of a chatbot like a helpful librarian. You ask where the travel section is, they point you there.

An AI agent, on the other hand, is like sending that librarian to locate that book, borrow it, readit and summarize the chapters for you.

In a nutshell, chatbots respond. Agents act.

Why AI Agents are in the Spotlight

There are three drivers that put AI agents on center stage:

  1. Rise of GenAI- Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini gave machines a human-like "brain" for reading, writing and reasoning.
  2. Automation Hunger- People don't just want answers, they want tasks done with minimal effort. Why stop at showing you flight options when the AI could book them for you?
  3. Ecosystem Explosion- Toolkits like LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, and AutoGen make building agents easier than ever. Think of them like Lego blocks you can "snap" together to create a working system.

The Anatomy of an AI Agent

Every AI agent has three essential components: the “agentic trinity”:

  1. Model (the brain) – A large language model (LLM) that interprets your request and decides what steps to take.

  2. Tools (the arms and legs) – External resources like calendars, booking sites, or databases that let the agent act in the real world.

  3. Orchestration (the decision cycle) – A control loop that manages reasoning, memory, and next actions until the task is complete.

Wrapping Up

That’s a high-level overview of AI agents. Hopefully this gave you some clarity on what they are and why they matter.

In my next post, I’ll dive deeper into their anatomy — the gears that make agents tick. If you like tinkering and want to peek under the hood, stay tuned.

👋 Ciao ~