Should You Use Agents or Automations?

There's a lot of confusion in the AI space right now.

“I automated this.”

“My agent runs 24/7 doing that.”

“Did you hear about agentic AI?”

While some of this stuff is legitimate, the problem is how ‘influencers’ use the terms interchangeably. It’s an innocent mistake, but one that can discourage people from exploring tools that would otherwise have a positive impact on their life and business.

So in today's issue, we’ll map out the differences between automation, agents, and agentic AI so you can decide where to best focus your time.

The Big Picture Stuff

Agentic AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that have “a high degree of autonomy, adaptability, and goal-directed behavior. They’re designed to make decisions, plan, and act independently in complex environments (e.g. the web) with human-like reasoning and/or creativity” (per Grok).

Unlike agents (discussed below), they’re less about generating a specific output and more about a system’s ability to complete tasks by itself. Specifically, agentic AI can initiate actions, adapt to new situations, and pursue goals without constant human intervention.

And it’s that ability to adapt to new situations (without human involvement) that separates agentic AI from both agents and automations.

AI Agents

Unfortunately, most people on social media confuse agents with agentic AI.

You can think of the two as the difference between a baby lion and a fully grown male one. Agentic AI is like the fully grown male: It’s capable, dominant, and does what needs to be done on its own (without any qualms or stress).

The baby, however, is much less capable.

Sure, it’s cute and fun to play with. But despite having the same DNA and essence as its parents, it’s dramatically less effective when it comes to doing adult lion stuff.

Which is the precise state of AI agents in 2025:

Yes, they’re fun to play with. And yes, some of them are capable of performing tasks a human would normally perform in their browser. But generally speaking, their abilities are just as limited as the baby lion’s.

*If you’ve never used an Agent, we highly recommend dabbling in ChatGPT’s Agent feature to dip your toes in the water.

AI Automation

In addition to confusing agentic AI with agents, many people confuse agents with automations. This time, however, the two have nothing in common.

While both are designed to generate a result without constant human prompting, the way each one operates is very different. Think of it like the difference between a self-driving car versus a GPS route.

Agents are like self-driving cars in the sense they go out into the world with a set destination, but have to react and adapt to everything going on around them (e.g. pedestrians, accidents, etc.) while driving.

Automations, however, are like the set of GPS instructions you get before leaving your house. They’re pre-defined, never change, and guarantee to get you to your destination (assuming you follow the precise steps).

The difference lies in their approach to completing the task.

Self-Directed vs Pre-Determined

While agents operate based off prompts, and have subjective decision-making abilities regarding defining the best way to accomplish their task, automations do not. In fact, automations don’t have any decision-making abilities whatsoever.

Instead, they’re pre-configured by a human to perform a specific set of steps in sequential order. And because of that, automations are much more akin to software than they are anything AI-related.

In fact, automation existed via platforms like Zapier well before ChatGPT went viral in 2022. But because there was nothing like AI to make subjective determinations as part of the automation, they were really nothing more than glorified data transfer robots.

By adding AI to the mix, however, automations - like the ones you see on n8n and Make.com - became exponentially more powerful.

Subjective, Creative Outputs

Mainly because, thanks to AI, we can now take a piece of data (input), use it as part of a prompt in the middle of the automation, and then use the AI’s output in the next step (or any future steps).

And that ability to a) subjectively interpret an input, and b) generate wildly creative outputs in the middle of the automation, has enabled us to create powerful systems that run on a set schedule (or can be triggered to run automatically).

Admittedly, automations don’t have the subjective decision-making abilities you’d see in a truly agentic AI system. But that hasn’t stopped people from building systems that run on autopilot to produce impressive outcomes.

Even better, building automations requires you to develop a deep understanding of what software, prompts, etc., are needed to take an input through multiple steps before finally arriving at your desired output.

And that level of systems thinking will prove critical as AI agents graduate from their current level of sophistication to something that resembles a more legitimate version of agentic AI.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you’re trying to leverage technology to automate some of your workload, there’s a 99% chance you should focus on AI-powered automation.

While agentic AI holds promise, in 2025, there’s almost nothing an agent can do that an automation can’t do better (and with less handholding / prompting).

Eventually, however, that will change.

Similar to a baby lion growing into a fully formed adult as its father ages, AI agents will eventually replace the need for automations. Mainly because automations are nothing more than JSON files that connect different software and perform different functions.

Which on a purely technical level, is not that complicated. But as of this writing, we’re 12-24+ months away from anything like that becoming a reality.

So if you want results now, focus on automation.

*And if you’re interested in learning more about how to leverage prompts and automation to streamline your daily work tasks…

Make sure to follow me on X…

And join Sentient’s brand-new AI Automations members community (it’s free : )

» Join the Sentient AI Automations Community «

Catch you next time,

Louis & Ivan

ChatGPTricks Post of the Week:

What did you think?

Want to connect with us? Send us a DM!

👉 Louis Gleeson 

👉 Ivan Acuna