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Defining AI Agents: A Compendium of Criteria, Metrics, and Benchmarks

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 10, 2026 · UTC

The term agent in artificial intelligence lacks a standard definition, complicating the evaluation, comparison, and reproducibility of AI agent research. We address this ambiguity through a survey organized around five dimensions of agenticness: environmental interaction, learning and adaptation, autonomy, goal-directed behavior, and temporal coherence. For each dimension, we examine how the underlying capability has been conceptualized across prior work and synthesize the metrics, benchmarks, and evaluation frameworks used to assess it. This review provides a structured account of the current

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