# Always on agents

An always-on agent is an AI agent that keeps working when nobody is in the conversation. It
runs in the background on standing goals, schedules, or incoming events, and comes back with
a result, a question, or a request for approval. OpenAI used the term for its dots agents on
September 29, 2026. Google describes the same shape for its Gemini agent, announced in October
2026, which can be scheduled or set to respond to events and keeps running for hours or days.
LangChain's Harrison Chase called the idea an ambient agent in January 2025.

It differs from a chatbot, which waits for a person to send a message, and from a scheduled
job, which runs the same predefined steps each time. An always-on agent decides its steps as
it goes, so two runs from the same trigger can do different things.

Because nobody watches each step, what it did has to be read from the record it keeps, and
small errors have more time to compound. As of October 2026, products handle this with
activity views, session logs, and approval rules for actions that change something.

## Questions answered under this concept

- [Can a scheduled always-on agent miss an entire run with nothing to show it was skipped?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/can-an-always-on-agent-miss-a-run-with-no-trace-of-it)
- [Can an agent violate a policy when every action it took was approved?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/can-every-approved-action-still-add-up-to-a-policy-violation)
- [Does an always-on agent's risk of overstepping grow with its task chain?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/does-an-always-on-agents-risk-of-overstepping-grow-with-its-task-chain)
- [How do you know what an always-on agent did overnight?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/how-do-you-know-what-an-always-on-agent-did-overnight)
- [How do you stop an always-on agent from going off track?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/how-do-you-stop-an-always-on-agent-from-going-off-track)
- [How do you test an always-on agent before letting it run unattended?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/how-do-you-test-an-always-on-agent-before-letting-it-run-unattended)
- [How is an always-on agent different from a chatbot or a scheduled job?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/how-is-an-always-on-agent-different-from-a-chatbot-or-a-scheduled-job)
- [How much does it cost to run an always-on agent?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-an-always-on-agent)
- [Should an always-on agent have its own identity and accounts?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/should-an-always-on-agent-have-its-own-identity-and-accounts)
- [What can an always-on agent do without asking for approval?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/what-can-an-always-on-agent-do-without-asking-for-approval)
- [What is an always-on agent?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/what-is-an-always-on-agent)
- [Why do long-running agents fail?](https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents/why-do-long-running-agents-fail)

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Source: https://tessary.ai/answers/always-on-agents
All concepts: https://tessary.ai/answers
From Tessary, agent reliability for AI agents in production: https://tessary.ai