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What AI Agents Really Are: A Simple TypeScript Loop That Shows How They Work

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An AI agent is a software system that uses a language model to pursue a goal autonomously by deciding next steps, calling tools, and acting on results in a continuous loop. Unlike a chatbot that responds once, an agent repeats this cycle — choosing actions, executing them, and feeding outcomes back to the model — until the task is complete. A working TypeScript example using the Anthropic SDK demonstrates this with a simulated order-lookup tool, requiring only an API key to run. The author notes that agents have become practical due to more reliable tool-calling, lower inference costs, and shared protocols like Anthropic's MCP, introduced in late 2024. Despite their capabilities, agents still require step limits, logging, and human oversight to guard against errors like repeated actions or hallucinated answers.

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