AI Governance Engineer
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Agent (agentic AI)

By Updated

An AI system that acts (browses, executes code, calls APIs, moves data or delegates to other agents) under delegated authority, rather than only producing text. Agents are the hardest object to govern because their behaviour is emergent and their actions have external effects.

Developed in
ch. 23, What makes an agent a governance object
ch. 11, Agentic systems
Chapters
ch. 01, Definition · ch. 11, AI Defined · ch. 23, AI Agents
Source
Defined by this Body of Knowledge: the section it is developed in is the source

Where it is used

9 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

  • Trajectory (agent)

    The sequence of plans, tool calls and memory operations that led an agent to an effect.

  • A2A (Agent2Agent protocol)

    An open protocol for agents to hand tasks to one another, at version 1.0 since March 2026 and a Growth Stage project of the Linux Foundation-directed Agentic…

  • Model risk management

    The banking-supervision practice of validating models for conceptual soundness, monitoring and outcomes analysis under effective challenge.

  • Guardian agent

    An AI agent whose job is to supervise, check or constrain other agents at runtime; Gartner predicts guardian-agent technologies will account for at least 10…

  • AI system

    For governance, the object the AI definition brings into scope.

Sources

No external source: the term is coined or used in a specific sense by this Body of Knowledge, and the section linked under "Developed in" is its source.

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Agent (agentic AI). In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/agent-agentic-ai. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026agentagenticai,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Agent (agentic AI)}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/agent-agentic-ai}
}