What is an AI Agent?
An introduction to AI Agents, their core components, and the common types you can build and enhance on the Forge pipeline.
More Than a Chatbot
While a chatbot responds to your questions, an **AI Agent** takes it a step further. An agent is a system designed to perceive its environment, reason about its goals, and take actions to achieve them. It's a doer, not just a talker.
Every agent, from simple to complex, has three fundamental parts: a **Brain (LLM)** for reasoning, **Perception** to understand its environment, and **Actions** to execute tasks.
The Main Types of Agents
Agents can be categorized by their capabilities. At JAXforge, we think about them in three stages of evolution.
These are focused agents designed to do one thing exceptionally well. Think of a 'summarization agent' or a 'code translation agent'. They take a specific input and produce a specific output, using the LLM as their core engine.
This is where agents become truly powerful—and it's the heart of our Forge. These agents can decide when to use external 'tools' to get new information or perform actions. A tool could be anything from a Google Search API, a private database, or a custom JAX model. The agent isn't just reasoning; it's actively gathering and using resources.
This is the frontier. These agents operate with more independence to achieve high-level goals. They can manage their own memory (like our Cognitive Context service), break down large tasks into smaller steps, and learn from their interactions over time. They are less about a single command and more about an ongoing mission.
The JAXforge Philosophy
We believe the most effective way to build powerful AI is to start with a solid foundation and add specialized capabilities. You can start with a simple agent and, through the Forge pipeline, equip it with the tools and memory it needs to become a sophisticated, autonomous system.