Ask HN: Are AI Agents a Lie?

LLMs awesome. They’ve changed how I code (Cursor), search for things, take notes, brainstorm, write emails, etc. (ChatGPT).

But I don’t use any AI agents. My friends don’t either. I haven’t even heard of any company building AI agents outside of the annoying customer service ones.

By AI agents I mean an LLM that does things in the background without needing constant feedback. Like booking a flight or scheduling a meeting.

The only useful “agentic” quality I’ve seen is basic file or web search to better answer my questions, which doesn’t feel like an agent.

Am I missing something? Why is there so much hype? Am I just understanding agents wrong?