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I'm ready to accept a definition of "agent" that I think is widely-enough agreed upon to be useful, at least in the AI engineering space: An LLM agent runs tools in a loop to achieve a goal (I've been dismissing the term as hopelessly ambiguous for years) simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/18/...

Hmm. The industry’s been using “user agent” to describe software agents responsible for retrieving and facilitating user interaction with web content for a very long time. Web browsers, download managers, feed readers, email clients, etc.

Agreeing with the general premise of your post, I’d venture that “user agent”, “software program”, “software system”, or even “software agent” are more apt phrases than “LLM agent” in most (perhaps all?) scenarios.

i hate the term agent because it’s paired with the term autonomous which is just so completely unreliable and discongruent with just about every experience in technology today. what we have now is a probabilistic rules engine at best.

yea i have thoughts on this locked behind work in progress but this is very much “do what i want and these are the rules of engagement” and only in that sense it’s an agent of your agency.