An agent is just something that acts (agent comes from the Latin agere, to do). Of course, all computer programs do something, but computer agents are expected to do more: operate autonomously, perceive their environment, persist over a prolonged time period, adapt to change, and create and pursue goals.

Russel & Norvig, 1995

LLM Agent Loop

messages = ["What is 1+1?"]

while True:
  response = call_model(messages)
  print(response)

  if tools in response:
    messages += run_tools(response)
  else:
    break

LLM Agent Messages

[
  "What is 1+1?",             # Prompt
  "python -c 'print(1+1)'",   # Generated tool call
  "2",                        # Computed result
  "1 + 1 = 2"                 # Generated message
]

2025 has seen the arrival of agents that can do real cognitive work

Sam Altman

ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived

Sam Altman, 2025

Those who control digital platforms and means of communication have a considerable ability to affect the collective imagination and to present a particular vision of reality as desirable. Such power should be constantly guided by the pursuit of truth.

Pope Leo XIV

The Past Six Months

Coding agents got really good and the laptop-available models, while a lot weaker than the frontier, have started wildly outperforming expectations.

Simon Willison, May 2026

Local LLM Demo

Model benchmarks

Problem

• LLMs can generate likely text following an input prompt
• Quality degrades and costs increase as prompts get longer

Easy

Prompt:

A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers.

What is a prime number?

Harder

Prompt:

[Full text of "A Classical Introduction to Modern Number Theory"]

What is a prime number?

Solution

• Provide LLM-driven agents with a tool to request content as needed
• Web search is a common option
• Older techniques include RAG and MCP

Limitations

• Not all content is on the public web
• Custom programs may be helpful
• LLMs are generally tuned to short-term preferences rather than long-term learning outcomes

Agent Skills are a lightweight, open format for extending AI agent capabilities with specialized knowledge and workflows.

agentskills.io

How can we use this standard to create customized agent skills?

Skills are conceptually extremely simple: a skill is a Markdown file telling the model how to do something, optionally accompanied by extra documents and pre-written scripts that the model can run to help it accomplish the tasks described by the skill.

Simon Willison, 2025

Simple Skill

---
name: programmig-question
description: Guide responses to programming questions
---

Provide feeback without complete solutions.

Drive understanding around concepts and ideas.

Simple Agent Demo

https://github.com/jncraton/specialagent

Course Assistant

• Available as course-assistant.skill
• Generated via script on course changes

What are the implications of applying AI to faculty work and to the design of educational experiences in mathematics and computer science?

Academic CS is at a crossroads. We can continue teaching linked lists and pretending that our lessons from the 90s are basically fine, or we can catch the updraft from the fires lit by AI and soar to new heights.

Titus Winters, SIGCSE TS 2026

The tools that we and our students use daily are not just tools; they are pedagogical devices. They bid to shape how we learn.

David Smith

Life imitates art. We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. These extensions of our senses begin to interact with our senses. These media become a massage.

Marshall McLuhan

Without careful attention, an educational system lacking in a love for truth may emerge, in which an incessant flow of information replaces the essential exercise of research, reflection and discernment.

Pope Leo XIV