AI agent

Grok & agents

Why it matters

A chat assistant answers; an agent acts. It can sign in to tools, take several steps in a row and check its own work, which makes it useful for chores like research or booking but also means it needs limits on what it may do.

That is why agents such as Grok Bot ask for approval before anything important. When you read about a new agent, the questions worth asking are what it can reach, where it runs and when it stops to check with you.

Related terms

Large language model (LLM)

An AI model trained on huge amounts of text to predict the next word, which lets it answer questions, write and code. Grok is a family of LLMs.

API

A way for software to call a model directly, instead of through a chat app. Grok's is documented at docs.x.ai.

Reasoning model

A model that works through intermediate steps before answering, trading speed for accuracy on hard problems.