Autonomous agents

Self-directed software systems that leverage LLMs to plan, execute, and iterate on complex workflows (like software engineering or market research) without manual prompting.

Autonomous agents move beyond simple chat interfaces to proactive execution. Frameworks like Microsoft’s AutoGen and CrewAI enable these systems to access external tools (browsers, Python kernels, and APIs) to solve multi-step problems. In recent benchmarks, multi-agent architectures outperformed single-model setups by over 25% on complex reasoning tasks (like the SWE-bench for software engineering). These agents operate in a continuous loop: they perceive an environment, reason through a plan, act via tool calls, and self-correct based on feedback. From Devin’s end-to-end coding capabilities to Zapier Central’s automated business logic, the shift is from AI as a tool to AI as a teammate that manages its own task list.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/glossary/autonomous-agents/