AI basics for your business
Prompt, assistant, automation, agent: what's the difference?
Four terms that are often confused, each with a different level of autonomy. With an example from an ordinary small business.
6 min read
Read anything about AI and you'll soon run into four terms that are often used interchangeably. They actually describe different ways of working, each with a different level of autonomy. Think of them as a ladder: the higher you go, the more the AI does on its own and the more oversight you need.
Prompt
A prompt is the instruction you give an AI tool. "Summarise this email in three points" is a prompt. You start, the AI responds, you decide what to do with it. Every use of AI starts here.
Example: the owner of a building firm pastes a long complaint email into an AI tool and asks for a calm, clear reply.
Assistant
An assistant is an AI tool you give standing instructions and background, so you don't have to explain who you are and how you work every time. Think of a project in Claude, a custom GPT in ChatGPT or an agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot that knows your house style, price list and frequently asked questions. You still talk to it yourself, but you start from a much better place.
Example: an office administrator uses an assistant that knows the company's quoting rules. She pastes in the customer's request and gets a draft quote in the right format.
Automation
An automation is a fixed sequence of steps that runs by itself when something happens. AI can be one of those steps. For instance: every new email to the info address is labelled, summarised and added to a list. Tools such as Make, n8n or Power Automate connect your software. The steps are set in advance; the AI fills in one of them.
Example: an online shop automatically sorts every return request by reason, so customer service can reply faster.
Agent
An agent is given a goal and decides which steps it needs. It can search, open documents, fill in fields in a system and check its own work. That's powerful, but it calls for more oversight: what access do you give it, what can it decide alone and what must it run past you first?
Example: an agent looks up the public company details of a new supplier, compares three quotes and prepares a recommendation for the owner to approve.
How to choose
- An occasional task that's a little different each time? A good prompt is enough.
- A frequent task with similar requests? Set up an assistant.
- Always the same steps, with few decisions? Consider an automation.
- A goal with varying steps that you can oversee? Only then does an agent come into play.
Start at the bottom of the ladder. If you learn to write good prompts first, you'll know far better what an assistant, automation or agent should actually do.
Test yourself
Every Monday you produce an overview of open quotes from the same list, always in the same format. What fits best?
Prompt to copy
Here is a task I do regularly: [describe the task, how often and in which software]. Tell me whether a single prompt, an assistant with standing instructions, an automation or an agent fits best. Explain why and what I need to get started.
