What is an AI agent, and how do you set one up?

You’ve probably heard the term “AI agent” a lot lately. It sounds technical, but the idea is simple, and you don’t need to be technical to use one. This guide explains what an agent is, how it differs from the chatbots you may already know, and how to set one up.

The agents people are talking about right now include Muse, Dots, Claude Duet, Grok Bot, Gemini Spark and Instinct. Whichever you pick, or if you try several, OpenPrefs works with it and keeps what each one knows about you in sync.

A chatbot answers. An agent gets things done.

A chatbot answers questions. Ask it for dinner ideas and it gives you a list, and finding a table is still up to you. An agent works toward a goal for you. It breaks a request into steps, uses tools to carry them out, checks how each step went, and comes back to you when it needs a decision.

Say you ask: “Find somewhere for dinner Friday at 7 for four of us, under $40 a person.”

• A chatbot suggests a few restaurants.
• An agent can search for places near you, check which ones have a table at 7, compare prices with your budget, and, if you’ve let it, book the table and add it to your calendar.

The tools are what make the difference. Depending on the agent and what you connect, an agent can search the web, read and draft email, look at your calendar, work with your files, or use other apps for you. Many apps you may already use, such as Claude and ChatGPT, can work as a chatbot or as an agent, depending on what you ask and which tools you turn on.

How to set up an agent

1. Pick one. The easiest place to start is an app you already use, since many now have agent features built in. If you’re choosing from scratch, WIRED tested every major AI agent, including Muse, Dots, Claude Duet, Grok Bot, Gemini Spark and Instinct, and compares how each one does. You don’t have to settle on one: OpenPrefs keeps them in sync if you try several.
2. Create an account, in the app, on the web or on your phone. Most agents have a free plan to try.
3. Connect the tools it needs. Agents connect to other services through what they call connectors, apps or integrations. Many support MCP, a common standard that lets one connector work with many agents. Start with only what your first task needs. You can always add more later.
4. Start with a small task you can check. For example: “Find three Italian restaurants near me that are open Friday night.” Look at what it did, and get a feel for how it works before you give it bigger jobs.
5. Decide what it can do on its own. Most agents ask before they spend money, send a message or delete something. Keep it that way until you trust the agent with that kind of task.

The catch: every agent starts out knowing nothing about you

An agent is only as helpful as what it knows about you. Your budget, the foods you avoid, the airline seat you always pick, the times you never want meetings. Every new agent starts without any of that, so you end up telling each one the same things again, and whatever one agent learns about you stays in that one app.

Where OpenPrefs fits

OpenPrefs keeps your preferences in one place you control, such as budgets, favorite spots, usual orders and house rules, and shares them with the agents you choose. Tell it once, and every agent you connect can use it.

• You choose what each agent sees. A new agent starts with no access. You pick the spaces it can use, and whether it can only read them or also make changes.
• You stay in charge of changes. You can have OpenPrefs ask you before an agent changes something, and every change is recorded with which agent made it and why, so you can undo it.
• It works with the agents you use. OpenPrefs connects to Muse, Dots, Claude Duet, Grok Bot, Gemini Spark, Instinct, Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code and any other app that supports MCP.

Once it’s connected, the dinner request above gets easier: the agent can look up your dining budget and the food you like in OpenPrefs instead of asking you. And when you tell an agent something worth remembering, such as “I prefer dinner after 6pm,” it can save it to OpenPrefs, where your other agents can use it too.

Trying more than one agent? OpenPrefs keeps them in sync

The best way to find the agent that suits you is to try a few, but that usually means starting from scratch each time. With OpenPrefs, every agent you connect reads from the same place. Try Muse for a week, then Claude Duet or Dots, and each one already knows your budget, your favorite spots and your house rules. When one agent saves something new, the others see it too, so they stay in sync however many you use, and switching agents doesn’t mean losing what the last one learned.

Connect your agent to OpenPrefs

The setup guides walk through each app step by step. Most take a couple of minutes, and you’ll need a free OpenPrefs account.

Want to compare agents?

For a closer look at how the major agents compare, read WIRED’s I Tested Every Major AI Agent for a Day. Here’s the Best One.

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