Agents vs Chatbots

Last week I chatted with a founder and their team showed off their "AI agent."

It wasn't an agent. It was a chatbot.

This keeps happening. People use the two words like they're synonyms. They aren't.

A chatbot is user-initiated. You ask, it answers, you decide when to stop. The loop is always closed by you.

An agent is different. It senses its environment, reasons, takes action, watches what happens, and goes again. The trigger isn't always a human. Could be a heartbeat that wakes it up every few minutes. Could be a signal from the world. Could be you, but the agent doesn't stop when you stop typing.

After two years building agentic workflows, here's the one-question test I use in every product review:

Does it have a heartbeat and/hooks?

If no, you have a chatbot. Which is fine. Just don't call it an agent. The architecture is different. The team you need is different. The way you measure success is different.

A chatbot is one interface your agent might use to talk to you. It isn't the agent.

If you're shipping "AI agents" today, does yours have a heartbeat?

hashtag#AI hashtag#Agents hashtag#ProductManagement