AI agents function not as autonomous actors, but as systems where a model generates structured text and external software executes it. This distinction between model prediction and tool execution is the core mechanic of agentic systems, though the speaker's claim that this architecture represents the universal standard for scaling remains an overgeneralization.

You should view AI agents as orchestration systems where the model serves as the reasoning component while the codebase provides the actual hands. The reliance on this harness means agent effectiveness depends more on the reliability of the execution loop than on the model's internal capabilities.