Agentic AI describes systems designed to act, not just respond: they plan multi-step work, use tools, check their own results, and adapt when something fails. It marks the shift from AI as a smart assistant you prompt repeatedly to AI as a worker you delegate to. For example, instead of asking a chatbot ten questions about unpaid invoices, an agentic system retrieves the invoices from your accounting tool, sends polite reminders, and reports back with a summary.