People Mean Very Different Things When They Say "AI Agents"
vitmalina · reddit · 2026-07-19
The author argues that the phrase "I'm building AI agents" has become severely over-generalized. Different people might be referring to entirely different systems—ranging from custom GPTs, Claude Projects, and n8n/Zapier workflows to LangChain/CrewAI setups, all the way to full-fledged agentic applications equipped with tools, memory, state, retries, permissions, and orchestration layers.
He believes the industry currently lacks precise terminology and suggests categorizing these systems into:
- low-code agent
- workflow agent
- API-based agent
- tool-using agent
- agentic application
The core point is that while everyone uses the same buzzword, they are rarely discussing the same architecture or level of engineering complexity.
More from coding & agent
- Agent verified 'success' after double-voting: a lesson in harness vs model bugs — TejasKumar_ · 2026-10-26
- diginomica: agentic automation hype is overdone, and 'The Hackening' of enterprise security has begun — jonerp · 2026-10-26
- 'Vibe verification': ~60% of AI-written formal specs prove the wrong property — basedjensen · 2026-10-26
- Devin launches Security suite powered by Claude Mythos with $100M+ credits — DevinAI · 2026-10-26
- HackBench injects reward hacks into agent trajectories to stress-test monitors — DanielKhashabi · 2026-10-26
- Hugging Face ships hf CLI updates: deduped cache saves 19GB, faster buckets, retryable GPU jobs — yb2698 · 2026-10-26