An AI agent isn't just a chatbot. It's an autonomous system that plans, makes decisions, uses tools, and takes action — independently, without hand-holding. Here's everything you need to know.
The definition
The word "agent" is being used everywhere — but most people don't know what makes an agent different from an ordinary AI assistant.
An AI agent is a software system that can perceive its environment, form a plan, make decisions, and take actions — all to accomplish a goal, without needing a human to guide every step.
The key word is autonomous. A standard AI chatbot responds to your message and waits for the next one. An agent takes a goal, breaks it into tasks, executes those tasks using whatever tools it has access to, evaluates the results, and adjusts — until the goal is done.
Think of the difference between asking someone for directions versus hiring a driver. The chatbot gives you directions. The agent gets you there.
AI agents can use tools like web browsers, code interpreters, APIs, email systems, databases, and image generators. They can call other AI agents as sub-agents. They can retry when something fails. They can ask clarifying questions when the goal is ambiguous. They operate more like a skilled employee than a lookup table.
The defining property of an agent is agency — the ability to decide what to do next, rather than simply responding to what you just said.
Waits for each prompt. Has no persistent goal. Cannot take action in the real world. Forgets context between sessions.
Plans a sequence of steps. Uses external tools. Evaluates its own output. Keeps going until the task is done — or asks for help when stuck.
Explains the process in text. You still have to do all the work yourself.
Plans the pages, generates the design, writes the copy, produces the code, deploys it, and sends you the live link.
Under the hood
Every AI agent follows the same core loop — perceive, reason, act, evaluate. Here's how that plays out in practice.
The agent is given a task — not a prompt to respond to, but an objective to accomplish. "Build a website for my plumbing business" is a goal. "What is HTML?" is a prompt. Agents work with goals.
Before doing anything, the agent reasons about what needs to happen. It breaks the goal into a sequence of smaller actions — each one achievable with the tools it has. This planning phase separates agents from basic AI.
The agent executes its plan using real tools: calling APIs, writing code, generating images, reading web pages, sending emails, querying databases. It's not just predicting text — it's doing things in the world.
After each action, the agent checks: did that work? Did it move closer to the goal? If not, it adjusts the plan and tries again. This self-correction is what makes agents reliable for complex tasks.
When the goal is achieved, the agent delivers the result. If it gets stuck — genuinely ambiguous input or a tool that keeps failing — it flags the issue and asks the human for guidance rather than guessing.
The taxonomy
Not all agents work the same way. Different architectures suit different kinds of tasks. Most modern AI systems combine several of these.
The simplest type. They respond directly to what they perceive right now — no memory, no planning. Fast and predictable, but limited to straightforward situations. Good for real-time sensor responses or simple rule-based systems.
Maintain an internal model of the world and plan before acting. They can reason about future states — "if I do X, then Y will happen." More powerful than reactive agents, but slower. Used in complex scheduling, robotics, and strategy systems.
Work backwards from a desired end state. They evaluate possible actions by asking "does this get me closer to the goal?" rather than following a fixed plan. Flexible and adaptable — the backbone of most modern LLM-based agents.
Don't just achieve goals — they optimise for the best possible outcome. They assign a score to different outcomes and choose the action that maximises that score. Used in recommendation systems, trading algorithms, and resource allocation.
Improve over time based on feedback. Every task makes them slightly better at future tasks. They adapt to new situations rather than requiring reprogramming. Foundation models like GPT and Claude are trained agents at their core.
Multiple specialised agents working together — one plans, one writes, one codes, one reviews. Each does what it's best at. The result is faster, more accurate, and more scalable than any single agent working alone. ChilledSites uses this approach.
In the wild
You probably interact with AI agents every day without realising it. Here are the most common places they appear.
When you open a support chat and the AI resolves your issue without a human — that's an agent. It reads your account data, checks order history, applies policies, and takes action (issuing a refund, updating an address) without any human involvement.
Tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor go beyond autocomplete — they understand your entire codebase, plan refactors across multiple files, write tests, fix bugs, and explain their reasoning. The best ones are full coding partners, not just text completers.
Give an agent a research question and it browses dozens of sources, extracts key information, cross-references claims, identifies gaps, and produces a structured report — all in minutes. What would take a junior analyst a day takes seconds.
Agents that monitor prices across retailers, automatically apply discount codes, complete checkout flows, and notify you when the price hits your target. They act on the web on your behalf, using a real browser, in the real world.
The most impressive consumer demonstration of agents: describe your business, and an AI agent plans your site structure, generates a complete design system, writes all the content, produces clean HTML and CSS, then deploys and hosts it — in under 60 seconds.
Agents that read earnings reports, parse regulatory filings, model scenarios, and generate investment summaries. What previously required a team of analysts can now be done on-demand, in seconds, for any publicly traded company.
ChilledSites
When you type a description of your business into ChilledSites, you're not triggering a template. You're starting an AI agent pipeline that builds a complete, unique website from scratch.
The agent reads your description and extracts the key signals: what kind of business, what tone, who the audience is, what pages are needed, what the primary goal of the site is. It asks clarifying questions if the input is too vague to proceed confidently.
Before writing a single line of HTML, the agent plans the full site structure — which pages, what sections each page needs, how navigation should work, what calls-to-action make sense. This deliberate planning phase produces far better output than generating page-by-page.
The agent creates a coherent visual design system for your site: colour palette, typography scale, spacing, component styles. Every page will look like it was designed by the same person — because it was, by an agent with a consistent visual model in memory.
The agent writes every headline, every paragraph, every call-to-action — tailored to your specific business and audience. Simultaneously, it produces the complete HTML and CSS for each page, responsive and accessible by default.
The agent reviews its own output before delivering it: does the content match the brief? Are there broken layouts? Is the navigation consistent? It self-corrects issues before you ever see the site — the same way a good developer would review their work before handing it over.
The finished site is deployed to a live URL, with SSL, fast CDN delivery, and your custom domain connected. No FTP. No server configuration. No deployment pipeline. The agent handles all of it, and hands you a live link.
After your site is built, you continue interacting with the agent. "Make the hero darker", "add a pricing section", "rewrite the about page" — all handled instantly.
Connect your own domain. The agent handles DNS configuration, SSL certificates, and CDN routing. Nothing to configure manually.
Every site comes with a real analytics dashboard. See traffic, referrers, top pages, and visitor geography — no third-party tracking required.
Contact forms, enquiry forms, lead capture — all generated automatically and wired up so you get an email the moment someone gets in touch.
ChilledSites runs a full AI agent pipeline the moment you describe your business. No templates, no drag-and-drop, no waiting. A complete, live website in under 60 seconds — from £29/year.
Build my website with AICommon questions
Describe your business. ChilledSites runs its AI agent pipeline and hands you a complete, live website in under 60 seconds. No templates. No drag-and-drop. Just AI that gets it done.