A founder says “we have agents” and usually means one of three different machines. Mixing them up is how a chat window gets production credentials.
Three tests
Ask three questions of the system in front of you.
- Does it hold a goal that survives more than one prompt?
- Can it use tools (files, mail, a browser, a repo, a payment API) without you pasting the output back in?
- Does it continue across steps when a tool returns something messy?
If the answer is no, no, no, you have a chatbot. That is a respectable product. It is not an agent.
If the answer is no, yes, no, you have automation: a script with a model somewhere in the pipe. Also respectable. Still not an agent.
If the answer is yes, yes, yes, you have something that can act. Now the only question that matters is whether anyone wrote the ceiling down.
Chatbot, automation, agent
A chatbot answers a turn. You type. It replies. The context window is the memory. When you close the tab, the work is gone unless you saved it.
An automation runs a fixed path. Ticket arrives, fields get filled, Slack pings. A model might classify the ticket. The path does not invent a new path. When it fails, it fails in a place you can find on a diagram.
An AI agent takes a goal, chooses tools, and keeps going. That is the useful definition for operators. It is also the dangerous one. An agent that can mail, spend, or open a pull request is not “AI.” It is a junior hire with no employment contract.
The glossary capsule is the short form. This page is the test you run in a meeting.
The charter is the definition
I do not call a system an agent until it has a written charter. Seven fields, same ones I use for human operators in CHORUS:
- purpose
- inputs
- outputs
- authority ceiling
- success criteria
- review requirement
- escalation
If you cannot fill those fields, you do not have an agent. You have a demo. Demos are allowed. Demos do not get the production key.
The human in the loop is not a person glancing at a dashboard. It is a named reviewer who can fail the output against the success criteria. No named reviewer, no loop.
The override doctrine is the other half of the charter. The charter says what the agent does. The doctrine says what it must refuse: spending above a ceiling, speaking as the company, changing production data, closing a judgment you still own.
Where this sits in the library
SENSE decides where an agent belongs in a founder’s week: which signal is worth a standing system, which claim needs a confidence grade, which Monday decision changes. AI Agents for Startup Strategy is the book that installs that layer.
STACK is the next door. Once you have a real agent, the repo it lives in starts to rot unless the agent OS is versioned like the app. That is a different article.
This page does not sell a runtime. Runtimes change names. The three tests and the charter do not.
A five-minute audit
Pick one system you already call an agent. Write the goal in one sentence. List the tools it can touch. Name the human who can stop a call. Write the one action it is forbidden to take.
If any line is blank, stop using the word agent for that system until the line is filled. The vocabulary is the control. Loose vocabulary is how a chatbot inherits an API key.