---
published: true
id: ai-agent
title: AI Agent
description: Knowledge captured in João Lopes' learning graph.
tags:
- ai-engineering
- agent-design
- claude-code
locale: en
resource: https://joaolopes.dev.br/knowledge/concepts/en/ai-agent/
created: '2026-03-19'
---

# AI Agent
An autonomous system that perceives its environment, plans across multiple steps, acts using tools, observes results, and self-corrects in a loop.

## Definition
An AI agent is a model running as a loop: gather context, act using tools, observe results, decide what to do next, repeat. Unlike autocomplete — where the model responds once to a prompt — an agent plans, acts, and self-corrects across an extended task. The loop is the same regardless of task: gather, act, observe. What changes is the skill that shapes how the agent gathers, what tools it calls, and where the human gates are.

## Source
- [AI agent - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_agent)
- [Claude Code overview](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview)

## Related
- [Skills](/concepts/en/skills.md)
- [Hooks](/concepts/en/hooks.md)
- [CLI](/concepts/en/cli.md)
- [MCP](/concepts/en/mcp.md)
- [Context Window](/concepts/en/context-window.md)