Simon Willison: 'Agent' Finally Has a Widely Agreed Definition — 'An LLM Running Tools in a Loop'

simonwillison.net·medium signal

Willison published a Substack post declaring 'agent' has finally reached consensus: 'an LLM that runs tools in a loop to achieve a goal.' Notable because Willison was previously a vocal skeptic of the term, calling it 'buzzword bingo' where everyone held different mental models. His acceptance signals the concept has stabilized enough for meaningful technical communication without scare quotes.