Autonomous agent
An AI system that pursues a goal with minimal step-by-step human direction, deciding its own actions to reach the outcome.
In more detail
An autonomous agent is given a goal rather than a script and works out the steps itself, deciding what to do next based on what it observes. The appeal is obvious: describe the outcome and let the system figure out the path. The risk is equally obvious, since an agent acting on real systems can make consequential mistakes without a human watching each step.
In practice, useful business autonomy is bounded autonomy. The agent has freedom to plan and act within a defined scope, but consequential actions pass through approval, tool access is limited, and every step is logged. Full unsupervised autonomy over irreversible actions is rarely what a business actually wants.
Where this shows up at Ceven
Ceven gives agents autonomy to plan and run the steps of a workflow, but bounds it deliberately: human-approval gates gate the consequential writes, and a full audit trail records every action. That is the difference between an agent that quietly does damage and one you can safely put in front of the customer's real tools.