What Actually Makes an AI "Agentic"? (The 4 Tiers)

Cutting through the "agentic" marketing hype

[0:00]Hi, I'm Divage Pow. This video is about what actually makes an AI agentic and where that label stops being true. You've seen the word on every startup's landing page, every keynote slide, every LinkedIn post promising the future just showed up. But here's the problem. Half the products calling themselves agentic are doing something a form on a website could basically do. And the other half are running loops that can rack up real costs or real consequences while you're not even watching. So today, we're doing a tear down. Not a dictionary definition, a spectrum. We're taking one task, book me a flight, and running it through four tiers of AI capability. By the end, you'll be able to look at any agentic claim and know exactly where it actually lives. Let's start at the floor. Tier zero is a single question, a single answer. You type, "Book me a flight to Chicago next Friday." The AI

Tier 0 & Tier 1: From helpful advice to single tool calls

[0:46]Replies with words, maybe something like, "Try Google flights, compare a few times, book whichever fits your schedule. Helpful advice, zero action. Here's what's actually happening under the hood. The model is predicting the next likely word over and over until it's built a full sentence. That's the entire mechanism. There is no flight search, no browser, no bank card. If this were a person, it's like texting your welltraveled friend for advice. Great advice, but they didn't lift a finger to book anything. Tier one is where things get real. Now, the model has been given access to a tool, say a flight search function. You ask the exact same question, and this time it doesn't just talk about flights. It sends a request to a real flight search system, gets back live prices and times, and shows you actual options. This is what people mean by function calling or tool use. The model recognized it needed

Tier 2: Multi-step planning and adapting on the fly

[1:32]Outside information. Format a request. The tool could understand, waited for the result, and used it. But watch closely. It stops there. It hands you a list. You still pick a flight, enter your card, hit purchase. One tool call, one job done, then control comes straight back to you. Tier two is where the AI stops acting like a search bar and starts acting more like an actual assistant. Instead of one tool call, it chains several together, building the plan itself as it goes. Say it differently this time. Book me a flight to Chicago next Friday, but only if it doesn't clash with anything on my calendar. Now the model has to actually check your calendar, search flights, line the two up against each other, notice you've got a 9:00 a.m. meeting that same morning and come back with something like, "There's a 7 a.m. flight that works or an 11:00 a.m. one that

Tier 3: The holy grail of autonomous memory loops

[2:15]Would make you miss your meeting. Which do you want? That's planning. A fuzzy goal got broken into ordered steps. Multiple tools got used in sequence and the plan adjusted based on what it actually found along the way. This is the tier most products marketed as AI agents genuinely live in. It looks autonomous, but it's bounded. A handful of steps, then it checks back in with you before spending your money. Now, tier three, the one everybody actually means when they say agentic. Even though most products on the market can't really do it yet, this is an AI that doesn't just run a plan once and stop. It runs in an ongoing loop, watching, deciding, acting, remembering, and it keeps working toward a goal over hours, days, sometimes weeks without you standing over its shoulder at every step. Picture this instead. You say it once, "Get me the best fair to Chicago sometime this month. Book it the moment the price

The 3-question audit checklist for any landing page

[3:00]Looks good." Tier three means it checks prices every day on its own. It remembers that you like aisle seats and morning departures because you mentioned that in a completely different conversation 3 weeks ago. It notices the airline canceled your original flight, rebooks you automatically, and only messages you afterward to say, "Handled it. Nothing restarted from zero." It's carrying context and decisions forward across time and making its own calls about when to act. This is genuinely powerful and genuinely risky. So, here's your tear down checklist. Next time you see agentic AI slapped on a landing page, ask three questions. One, does it use tools or does it just talk? If it's just talk, it's tier zero, no matter how it's branded. Two, does it chain

Multiple steps into a plan or does it fire off one tool call and stop? Chaining is tier 2 behavior. Three, does it keep running without you? And does it remember what happened in past sessions? That's the only real tier three. Most of what's sold as agentic today comfortably sits in tier 1 or tier 2. True tier three autonomous memory carrying loops is rare, harder to control, and honestly still being figured out by the best labs building this stuff. So, here's the whole spectrum in one frame. Tier zero talks and touches nothing. Tier one makes a single tool call and hands control straight back. Tier two plans several steps, adapts, and still checks in before it spends anything. Tier three runs a loop with memory for

Days without you. Agentic was never a yes or no label. It's a spectrum of how much a system does on its own and how far it carries what it knows between actions. Now you know exactly where to look. Your turn. Here's the prompt. Audit an AI product I use. Which tier is it really? 0, 1, 2, or three? And what evidence proves it? Run that on a tool you actually pay for. Then check the answer against three things. Does it name the specific tools the product can call? Does it show a plan running more than one step? And does it prove memory carries across separate sessions? If a tier three claim comes back without that last one, the claim is marketing. Signing off. Divage power.