Guide · understand it in five minutes

What is an AI agent? The simple explanation, without jargon.

An AI agent is an AI that doesn't just answer: it acts. You give it a goal, it picks the steps, uses your tools and comes back with the result. Here is the idea, in simple images, then what it changes for a business.

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Hermes Agent is an open source project by Nous Research. Kailli is not affiliated with Nous Research.

01The image to remember

An assistant explains, an agent does

ChatGPT is a colleague who explains how to fill in the tracking spreadsheet. An agent is the colleague who fills it in, shows it to you, and remembers next week how you like it done.

QuestionAssistant (chatbot)AI agent
What does it do?it answers and advisesit acts until the job is done
Where does it work?in a chat windowin your files, email, calendar, spreadsheets
Does it remember?a little, one conversation at a timeyes, it keeps a notebook
Who does the work?you, with its adviceit does, and you check

02The parts

The five parts of an AI agent

An agent is an AI model plus five things around it. Each one can be explained with an everyday object.

Memory: a notebook

It writes down your preferences and what has been decided. Next time, no need to explain everything again.

Tools: its toolbox

Files, email, calendar, spreadsheets, business software. Without tools, it can only talk; with them, it can do.

Skills: recipe cards

Like a procedure sheet handed to a new hire: once written, the task gets done the same way every time. For example "prepare an invoice" or "publish an article."

Scheduled tasks: an alarm clock

"Every Monday, prepare the weekly summary." It handles it on its own, at the set time.

Guardrails: asking for permission

Like an intern who is told to get sign-off before sending anything: nothing is sent, paid or deleted without a human's approval.

03At work

What it changes for a team

An agent doesn't replace a person: it takes on repetitive tasks that follow known steps, and the human keeps the decision.

  • Tasks that come back every week, always done the same way.
  • Research that means opening ten sources before drawing a conclusion.
  • Drafts: follow-ups, meeting notes, articles, invoices to approve.
  • Monitoring: a server, an inbox, a watch topic.

Concrete examples: the use cases of an AI agent. Hermes Agent, the open source agent we use every day, brings exactly these five parts together.

04An example

A day with an agent

An illustrative example, modeled on what Hermes Agent does for us.

  • 7am: the alarm goes off, the agent prepares a summary of overnight messages.
  • 9am: we ask it for keyword research; it searches, compares and returns a table.
  • 11am: it writes an article draft using its "article" recipe card.
  • 3pm: it prepares an invoice, then waits for approval before anything is sent.
  • 6pm: it writes down in its notebook what was decided during the day.

Do your teams want to learn to work with an agent? Let's talk for 20 minutes.

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Written by Rémi Carbonnefounder and CTO of Kailli

Frequently asked questions about AI agents

What is an AI agent?

An AI agent is an AI model that receives a goal, chooses the steps and acts inside your tools until the job is done, with a memory and rules set by a human.

What is the difference between ChatGPT and an AI agent?

An assistant like ChatGPT answers in a chat window. An agent uses tools (files, email, calendar) to do the task itself, then submits it to you.

Can an AI agent make mistakes?

Yes. That's why it gets limited permissions, we keep a log of what it does and a human approves anything that sends, pays or deletes.

Do you need to know how to code to use an AI agent?

Not for everyday use. Installation and security scoping, however, require someone technical, or outside support.

Which AI agent should you start with?

It depends on your tools and your data. Hermes Agent is a solid open source option; we also compare it with OpenClaw and the agents built into Claude or ChatGPT.

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