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What Are AI Agents?

Understanding the shift from AI tools to AI colleagues

The paradigm shift isn't about AI doing more work.

It's about AI becoming a capable colleague who understands context, takes initiative within boundaries, and can be trusted with increasing autonomy.

Key Concepts

AI Agent

Software that can perceive its environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve goals—with varying degrees of autonomy.

Orchestration

Coordinating multiple agents or tools to accomplish complex tasks. The conductor, not the instruments.

Trust Engineering

Calibrating how much autonomy to grant an agent based on task risk, reversibility, and verification capability.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

A standard for connecting AI models to external tools and data sources. Think USB for AI capabilities.

Why 2026 Is the Year

2023Chat interfaces become mainstream

AI as conversation partner

2024Tool use and function calling mature

AI can take actions, not just talk

2025Multi-agent orchestration emerges

AI teams, not just individuals

2026Autonomous agent workflows

AI colleagues with trust boundaries

The Real Bottleneck

"Models are no longer the limitation."

YOU and I are.

The old question

"Can AI do this?"

The new question

"How much do I trust AI to do this?"

Ready to explore how I apply these concepts?