Agentic AI Cheat Sheet: A Guide to AI Agents, Tools, and Risks
eWeek, Thursday, June 25th, 2026
A guide to agentic AI systems that autonomously plan and execute tasks, plus their tools, protocols, and risks.
Agentic AI marks a shift from reactive systems that answer prompts to autonomous systems that pursue complex goals by planning, using tools, and adapting.
The guide covers a three-component model of reasoning engine, tools, and protocols, plus frameworks like LangGraph, CrewAI, and the OpenAI Agents SDK.
It explains design patterns such as ReAct, Plan-and-Execute, Reflection, and Human-in-the-Loop, and standards like the Model Context Protocol and Agent2Agent Protocol.
Security guidance stresses treating inputs as untrusted, applying least agency, and following the OWASP Top 10 for agentic apps.
A decision framework advises confirming a single LLM call won't suffice before building agents.