What building Shippy taught us about building agents
Source
allenai.org
Date
Terms in this piece · Glossary
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
system prompt — The standing instructions a model receives before any user input — defining its role, rules, tools, and tone for the whole conversation.
Why it matters
Splitting an AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → into an immutable image (system promptThe standing instructions a model receives before any user input — defining its role, rules, tools, and tone for the whole conversation.Full definition → plus skills) and mutable config gives you a versioned, deployable artifact you can roll back, and forces the question of what must be verified against live data instead of a fixture.
