Behind the Craft · Sunday, August 9, 2026
Jacob explains that at its core, an AI agent is essentially a Large Language Model (LLM) operating in a continuous loop. Unlike a standard LLM interaction which yields a single answer, agents are designed for complex tasks, executing actions iteratively by calling tools to gather context. This process continues until the agent determines the goal is met, at which point it synthesizes a final response.
“So at a high level, an agent is really just calling an LLM in a loop.”
“Normally when you call an LLM, you're gonna give it one question, you're gonna get one answer back.”
“But we want agents to be really autonomous and be able to accomplish more complex tasks.”
“And you'll give it tools that allow it to build its own context and then just run it in a loop.”