Everyone and their marketing team wants to call their product an "AI agent" now. Your email scheduler? Agent. Your chatbot? Agent. That Zapier workflow that moves data from one place to another? Definitely an agent.

Except none of these things are actually agents..

Here's what these words actually mean, because apparently we need to have this conversation.

ChatGPT and friends: Smart, chatty, completely helpless. They can write you a brilliant email but can't actually send it. They'll analyze your data all day long but can't update a single cell in your spreadsheet. Think of them as a very smart person locked in a glass box. Great advice, zero ability to act on it.

Automation: Follows orders perfectly, forever. If this, then that. When X happens, do Y. Cannot improvise, cannot adapt, cannot think. Your Zapier workflow will dutifully copy the same data to the same place in the same format until the heat death of the universe. This is a feature, not a bug.

Actual agents: ChatGPT's brain with a toolbelt and a mission. You give it a goal—"research this company and draft a personalized outreach email"—and it figures out how to get there. It can search the web, check LinkedIn, write the email, and send it. If something doesn't work, it tries a different approach. If the data looks weird, it transforms it. It has judgment and the power to act on it.

Most of what people are calling "AI agents" are just regular automation with better marketing copy. Which is fine! Automation is incredibly useful. But let’s not get confused.

Most of what you need to automate doesn't require artificial judgment anyway. It just requires something that will do the boring stuff correctly every single time without complaining.

Takeaway The tool that solves your problem matters more than whatever trendy name it's wearing this quarter.

Still using "workflow" like it's 2019,
Jamie