AI agent
An AI agent is software that perceives its environment, decides what to do, and takes action toward a goal — often autonomously and over multiple steps — by using tools, calling APIs, and reasoning with a language model. Unlike a chatbot that only generates text in reply to a prompt, an agent can act on the world: it can search, read, write to systems, and chain steps together to complete a task rather than just answer a question.
Key characteristics
- Goal-directed — it works toward an objective you set, rather than producing a single one-off response.
- Perceives and acts — it takes in information (a prompt, a document, an event) and can take actions in external systems, not just emit text.
- Uses tools — it calls APIs, runs searches, queries data, or operates connected applications to get things done.
- Reasons over multiple steps — it can plan a sequence of actions and adapt based on what each step returns.
- Operates with some autonomy — it can run with limited human input, within whatever permissions and guardrails it is given.
- Maintains state — many agents keep memory of prior steps or sessions to inform what they do next.
Example
A customer-support AI agent receives an incoming ticket, reads the customer's order history from a connected CRM, checks a returns policy document, decides whether the request qualifies for a refund, and either drafts a reply or escalates to a human — completing several reasoning and tool-use steps from a single trigger, rather than just answering one typed question.
How it relates to Kuvai
"AI agent" describes the underlying software pattern — perceive, decide, act. Kuvai packages that pattern as an AI teammate built around your business: a named colleague that owns a defined job, is grounded in your own documents and data, and is connected to your tools with explicit approval. Rather than a generic agent you configure from scratch, you describe the job in plain language and get a teammate shaped to it. And because trust matters when software can act, a Kuvai teammate drafts before it sends — sensitive actions are gated behind your approval and every action is logged with its reason. Start free with Mia, an inbox coordinator, then build the rest of your team.
Related terms
Agentic AI is artificial intelligence that plans and takes multi-step, autonomous action toward a goal — rather than just generating a single piece of text in response to a prompt. Where a standard generative model answers what you ask, agentic AI decides what needs to happen, breaks the goal into steps, uses tools to carry them out, and adapts as it goes, working with limited human input.
AI teammateAn AI teammate is a software colleague that owns a defined job end-to-end — grounded in a business's own documents and data, connected to its tools, and running on a schedule. Unlike an AI assistant you prompt, a teammate works continuously, accumulates your context, and drafts actions for your approval rather than waiting to be asked.