Agents
8 tools
What is an AI agent?
A chatbot answers you. An agent does the work. You give it a goal, and it works in a loop: it reads your files, runs commands, checks the result and tries again, until the job is done or it needs you.
In your editor or terminal
Claude Code, Cursor and Codex. You watch the agent work and approve changes as it goes. This is where most vibe coders start.
Cloud agents
Devin, Jules and GitHub Copilot's coding agent. You hand over a task, close your laptop, and come back to a pull request to review. No coding needed, but you should check what it wrote.
Agent frameworks
Code libraries for building your own agent into a product, such as a support bot that can look up orders. You will write code, usually Python or TypeScript.
Which one do I need? Building an app with AI? Start with an agent in your editor or terminal. Want tasks done while you are away? Try a cloud agent. Adding an AI feature for your own users? That is when you need a framework.
Google ADK
Google's Agent Development Kit, in four languages.
Open sourceAgent frameworkPythonTypeScriptMulti-agentMicrosoft Agent Framework
Microsoft's agent framework for Python and .NET, successor to AutoGen.
Open sourceAgent frameworkPythonMulti-agentOpenAI Agents SDK
OpenAI's lightweight framework for multi-agent workflows.
Open sourceAgent frameworkPythonTypeScriptMulti-agentClaude Agent SDK
Build your own agents on the same harness as Claude Code.
PaidAgent frameworkPythonTypeScript
