What Is an Agent Loop? How AI Agents Reason, Act, and Iterate (opens in new tab)

People keep talking about agent loops because they make an AI agent actually do useful work instead of just sounding smart. Without a loop, a model answers a question and stops. With a loop, it can keep going: analyze the task, take action, inspect the result, and decide what to do next. That is the basic shape of agentic AI. The short version An agent loop is an iterative cycle that usually looks like this: Understand the goal Gather context Decide on the next action Use a tool or API Observ...