Capabilities of AI Agents

AI agents are highly flexible because several capabilities work together: they understand goals, plan steps, retrieve context and interact with tools. Each ability is useful alone, but their combination is what makes an agent feel capable.

Retrieval anchors an answer in useful context. Planning turns an ambiguous request into manageable steps. Tool use lets an agent do something beyond conversation. Evaluation gives it a way to check whether the work is complete.

The design opportunity is to expose the right amount of this process. People should be able to see progress and correct course without being overwhelmed by implementation detail.