Agent

The definition

Software that uses tools to carry out tasks and workflows — not just replying, but acting: calling APIs, running steps, making changes. Distinct from a stateful agent runtime (see Stateful agents), which is about carrying state within a task or thread.

The same words the glossary hub and the public data mirror carry; this page is the stable address for the term.

Related terms

• Continuity layer

  A continuity layer is the part of an AI system that carries forward governed state across sessions, tools, models, and hosts: what is currently true, what…

• State

  The current condition of a user, workflow, task, or process — what persists between steps and sessions. Distinct from governed state, which adds provenance…

• AI continuity

  The property of carrying a project’s understanding forward across sessions, tools, agents, and models — not just storing it, but keeping it current,…

• Continuity Runtime

  The execution environment where a continuity engine governs interactions between a user and a model, tool, or agent before state is carried forward.

• Stateful agents

  Agent runtimes and frameworks that carry state across steps and tool calls within a task. Necessary for continuity but mostly scoped to a task or thread —…

• Identity contract

  The versioned statement of who an agent is across runtimes: which facts, commitments and roles are its own, and who may change them. If replacing the model…

• Memory portability

  Whether the owner can take what a system remembers out of it in a form another system can read, and bring memory in. Export and import are graded on the…

• Derived memory

  Anything a system built from a stored item: a summary, a reflection, a plan, a cached tool result, a learned skill, an embedding, a copy in a peer agent.…

Where it shows up on this site

• Best local coding model · GuideQwen3.8, Devstral, Qwen3-Coder, by the memory you have
• Agents on local models · LearnRun an AI agent on your own machine, with limits you set
• The Ladder · LearnFour free rungs: from chatting with AI to an agent that works for you
• First agent · LearnRung 2: an agent that runs without you
• Setup Desk · AboutWork with Adam: we set up your AI agent
• Claude Code alternatives · AlternativesThe other 7 coding agents on the record, ranked by grade, with what each keeps
• OpenAI Codex alternatives · AlternativesThe other 7 coding agents on the record, ranked by grade, with what each keeps
• Cline alternatives · AlternativesThe other 7 coding agents on the record, ranked by grade, with what each keeps