Every week, another vendor slides into your DMs with promises of “revolutionary agentic AI solutions” that will “transform your entire business.” The marketing drumbeat is deafening: Gartner names agentic AI as the top strategic technology trend for 2025, IBM declares 2025 “the year of the agent”, and McKinsey positions agents as “the next frontier” of AI innovation.

In press and marketing, terms like “agent-based” and “agentic” are often used interchangeably, creating confusion even among seasoned technologists. This distinction isn’t just semantic nitpicking—understanding the difference has profound implications for how we build, deploy, and govern AI systems.