An interesting shift I’ve seen over the past few weeks, is we’re starting to refer to bare LLMs themselves as “agents”.
Used to be that agent = LLM + scaffold/harness/loop/whatever.
Used to be that agent = LLM + scaffold/harness/loop/whatever.
These all make the "bare LLMs" better suited to be used within the "agent" harness.
I think the more accurate term would be "agentic LLMs" instead of calling them "agents" outright. As to why its the case now, probably just human laziness and colloquialisms.
I give it 3-4 more weeks before we start to hear about the death of agentic frameworks. Pointing GPT5+ at a powershell or C#/Python REPL is looking way more capable than wiring up a bunch of domain-specific tools. A code-based REPL is the ultimate tool. You only need one and you can force the model to always call it (100% chance of picking the right tool). The amount of integration work around Process.Start is approximately 10-15 minutes, even if you don't use AI assistance.