Planning
An AI agent's ability to break down complex goals into a sequence of steps and determine the best order of actions to accomplish a task. Planning involves reasoning about dependencies, priorities, and contingencies.
Why It Matters
Planning is what separates true AI agents from simple chatbots. It enables autonomous multi-step task completion with minimal human intervention.
Example
An AI agent asked to 'prepare a quarterly report' breaking it down: gather data → clean data → run analysis → create charts → write narrative → format document.
Think of it like...
Like a project manager creating a Gantt chart — they figure out what needs to happen, in what order, and what depends on what before any work begins.
Related Terms
AI Agent
An AI system that can autonomously plan, reason, and take actions to accomplish goals. Unlike simple chatbots, agents can use tools, make decisions, execute multi-step workflows, and adapt their approach based on results.
Reasoning
An AI model's ability to think logically, make inferences, draw conclusions, and solve problems that require multi-step thought. Reasoning goes beyond pattern matching to genuine logical analysis.
Multi-Agent System
An architecture where multiple AI agents collaborate, each with specialized roles or capabilities, to accomplish complex tasks that no single agent could handle alone.
Agentic AI
AI systems designed to operate with high autonomy — planning, executing, and adapting without constant human oversight. Agentic AI emphasizes independent action-taking to accomplish user goals.