Planning Agent
In one line
A planning agent is an agent that first drafts a multi-step plan for a goal and then executes it step by step, calling tools as needed.
Going deeper
A planning agent splits work into two stages — draft a plan, then execute — instead of deciding the next move on every step the way ReAct does. Patterns like Plan-and-Execute or Tree-of-Thoughts fall into this family.
It shines on multi-step workflows. Campaign planning, content drafting and scheduling, ops automation — anything with many ordered steps gets more stable when a plan is laid out up front rather than improvised.
The catch is that a bad plan poisons the entire execution. Production setups usually separate the Planner from the Executor and add a human-in-the-loop checkpoint to review the plan before tools start firing.
Related terms
ReAct
ReAct (Reasoning + Acting) is the classic agent pattern where an LLM loops through Thought, Action and Observation steps — reasoning out loud and calling tools as it goes.
AI AgentAI Agent
An AI agent is an LLM-driven system that takes a goal, plans the steps, calls the tools it needs and runs the task end-to-end with limited human input.
AI AgentHuman-in-the-Loop
Human-in-the-loop (HITL) is the design pattern where an agent runs autonomously but routes critical decisions through a human for review and approval.
AI AgentOrchestrator Agent
An orchestrator agent is the top-level agent that schedules sub-agents, assigns roles and enforces stop conditions — the control tower of a multi-agent system.
AI AgentAutonomous Agent
An autonomous agent runs with minimal human input — it decomposes the goal, executes, evaluates and iterates on its own until the task is done.