AI / Agentic AI Interview Questions
What are the core components of an AI agent?
Most agent architectures decompose into the same handful of core components, regardless of the specific framework used to build them.
| Component | Role |
| Perception | Handles context window management, conversation state, and input validation |
| Reasoning | Decides the next action through planning, tool selection, and adaptive decision-making |
| Memory | Stores and retrieves past interactions for context-aware decisions |
| Planning | Breaks a goal down into a sequence of steps or subgoals |
| Action/Tools | Executes real operations like API calls, code execution, or file access |
These components work together in a loop: perception feeds reasoning, reasoning consults memory and produces a plan, and that plan is carried out through tool-based actions, whose results feed back into perception for the next cycle.
Which component decides the next action through planning and tool selection?
Which component stores past interactions for context-aware decisions?
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