One concrete question reveals whether the product chooses its own path or simply runs predefined instructions.
EXPERT OPINION BY PAM DIDNER, B2B MARKETING CONSULTANT AND AI STRATEGIST
In my first year working with AI, I couldn’t tell the difference between an agent and an automation. I used the terms interchangeably.
At the individual level, I built custom agents to take on repetitive tasks. You give the agent a prompt, and it does the job. Or you can schedule the agent by baking the prompt in and letting it run on its own.
The obvious question is how that differs from automation. It doesn’t. The task runs, the instructions are fixed, and no situational judgment is required. In that setup, “agentic” is a fancier word for automation, and that is fine.
The difference is where the judgment lives
As I learned more about AI, I came to realize that automation is a static workflow that follows a path you defined in advance. An agent can call that same workflow, but the AI decides the path as it goes, choosing which steps to take and which tools to use.
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Anthropic drew the same line in its engineering guidance for developers: workflows run through “predefined code paths,” and agents “dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage.”
That distinction has nothing to do with the software you buy. It is about how much decision-making you hand over. Automation follows the path. An agent picks it.
I am not saying agents are the destination and automation is the training wheels. Sometimes, it is closer to the reverse. Most of the work on your team’s plate is repeatable, and repeatable work wants automation, because it is predictable and easy to build.
