The original title is "AI Agents vs Chatbots — What's Actually Different?"

Short summary

Chatbots are conversational responders; agents are autonomous operators that take actions, observe results, and adapt. The key difference: agents use tools (files, APIs, code execution) and must manage context across multiple steps, while chatbots accumulate conversation text. Understanding this distinction is critical for evaluating AI tools, designing workflows, and recognizing what evaluation burden falls on humans rather than automation.

• •Chatbots generate responses; agents execute multi-step tasks with tools
• •Agents fill context faster and risk compounding errors across steps
• •The distinction matters for tool evaluation and workflow design

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.