What is an AI agent (and how it differs from a chatbot or an assistant)

An AI agent is a program that is given a goal and achieves it on its own: it decides which steps to take, uses other tools (email, calendar, CRM, ERP) to take them and checks the result. It doesn't wait for you to ask, like a chatbot, or for you to request each thing, like an assistant. It works on its own, within certain limits, and checks with you on what matters.

The three parts of an agent

Every AI agent has three parts:

1. A language model (Claude, GPT, Gemini…), which understands what's going on and decides what to do.
2. Tools: what it can work with. Reading and sending emails, looking up the CRM, creating an order in the ERP, checking the calendar or searching the web.
3. Instructions and limits: what its job is, how it should do it, what it can do alone and what needs your approval.

With that, the agent works in a loop: it looks at the situation, decides the next step, uses a tool, looks at the result and decides again, until the task is done.

What is the difference between an agent and an AI assistant?

Initiative. An AI assistant helps you when you ask: you write to it, it answers, and that's it. An AI agent has an assigned job and does it without being asked: it checks the inbox every few minutes, prepares the morning report or writes to the customer who hasn't replied for a week.

• Chatbot: answers your customers' questions within a script. If nobody writes to it, it does nothing.
• Assistant (ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini): helps you when you ask it to.
• Agent: does a whole job on its own, with your software, and keeps you informed or asks your permission.

Is ChatGPT an AI agent?

On its own, no: ChatGPT is an assistant that answers when you write to it. But the same models ChatGPT uses (or Claude, or Gemini) are the "brain" of agents. What turns a model into an agent is giving it tools, a job and permission to act. ChatGPT and Claude themselves already include agent features, such as browsing the web or using software, but an agent for your business needs to be connected to your systems and follow your rules.

Examples of AI agents in a business

• Orders agent: reads orders that arrive by email, recognises the customer and the items, and leaves the order ready in the ERP for someone to approve.
• Payments agent: matches the bank against issued invoices and writes to anyone who's late, in a tone you approve.
• Sales agent: finds companies that fit what you sell, writes the first email and the follow-ups, and hands you the conversation when someone replies.
• Customer service agent: answers frequently asked questions by email or WhatsApp and passes on to you whatever it can't resolve.
• Management agent: every morning it sums up sales, pending customers and the day's decisions.

What types of AI agents are there?

For a business, the useful classification is by what they can do on their own:

• Agents that only report: they read data and alert you (anomalies, outstanding payments, daily summary). They're the safest way to start.
• Agents that prepare: they leave the work done for you to approve (a draft order, a reply to a customer).
• Agents that act: they do the whole job within certain limits (sending a follow-up, recording a small expense).

The usual approach is to start with an agent that prepares and, once you see it gets things right, let it act alone on routine work.

A real case

At balderas.studio our own company runs on agents: one per department (Management, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Development…), each with its own chat on our phones. Sales writes to new companies on its own, but shows us emails to anyone who has already replied before sending them. Finance categorises bank transactions, but never pays anything. Marketing writes this blog, and we approve each article with a button before it goes live. And everything can also be looked up from Claude, via MCP.

Does my business need an AI agent?

Probably, if someone on your team spends several hours a week on tasks that always follow the same steps: copying data from emails into another program, chasing documents or payments, answering the same questions or putting together the same reports. See which processes can be automated and what it costs, or work out how many hours you'd get back with our hours calculator.

If you'd like to see it for your own case, have a look at how we build AI agents for business or tell us what eats up your time.