AI UX Agents and Workflows Glossary for Designers
Multi-step AI systems that plan, use tools, and hand off work across people and software until a task is done.
14 terms
- Agents and workflows
A2A (Agent-to-Agent)
A2A (agent-to-agent) communication is when one AI agent delegates tasks, shares context, or negotiates outcomes with another agent instead of only talking to the user.
- Agents and workflows
Action Receipt
An action receipt is a plain-language record of what an agent did, when, and with what permissions—like a bank notification, not a server log.
- Agents and workflows
Agent
An agent is an AI system that plans steps, uses tools, and acts across multiple turns to complete a goal, not just answer a question.
- Agents and workflows
Agentic UX
Agentic UX is the design of interfaces for software that plans and acts on a user's behalf—tools, files, APIs, and multi-step workflows—not only text replies.
- Agents and workflows
Autonomy Slider
An autonomy slider lets users set how independently an agent may act—from suggest-only to draft to execute—often per task or surface.
- Agents and workflows
Claw
In agent tooling, a claw is the reach of an AI orchestrator into your environment: spawning sessions, running commands, editing files, or driving browsers on your behalf.
- Agents and workflows
Harness
A harness is the runtime environment that wraps a model with tools, policies, memory, and orchestration so agents can act inside your product or repo.
- Agents and workflows
Intent Preview
Intent preview shows what an agent plans to do before it executes—especially for multi-step or irreversible actions.
- Agents and workflows
Loop Engineering
Loop engineering is designing iterative cycles where an AI observes context, acts, checks results, and repeats until a task completes or a human stops it.
- Agents and workflows
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to external tools, data sources, and services through a shared protocol.
- Agents and workflows
Orchestration
Orchestration is how an AI product coordinates multiple models, tools, retrieval steps, and human checkpoints into one coherent run.
- Agents and workflows
Responsive Salience
Responsive salience is when an AI interface automatically increases or decreases oversight UI—explanations, approvals, transparency—based on task risk and user context.
- Agents and workflows
Tool Use
Tool use is when a model invokes external functions (search, calculators, APIs, code runners) to go beyond plain text generation.
- Agents and workflows
Workflow
An AI workflow is a multi-step process that combines prompts, tools, human review, and structured handoffs to reach an outcome, not a single chat reply.