What Are AI Agents and How Are They Changing Software Development?

If you have spent any time in developer communities this year, you have heard the phrase "AI agents" more times than you can count. It gets thrown around in product announcements, conference talks, LinkedIn posts, and job descriptions. Most of the time it sounds impressive and stays vague. This post is going to make it concrete. Not because the buzzword matters, but because what it describes is genuinely changing the way software gets built, and understanding it will help you use these tools mor