ModelRefs / Agent Planning — AI Glossary
Agent Planning — AI Glossary
The process by which an agent decomposes a high-level goal into a sequence of executable sub-tasks.
Overview
Planning quality is the primary determinant of agent success on long-horizon tasks. Approaches: one-shot planning (generate full plan then execute), iterative planning (plan one step at a time), hierarchical planning (decompose into sub-plans). Reasoning models (o3, R1) significantly improve plan quality.
Reference details
| Topic | agents |
|---|---|
| Last reviewed | 2026-06-24 |
Related terms
Commonly confused with
Planning is the whole activity — decomposing a goal, ordering the pieces, and revising when a step returns something unexpected. Task decomposition is the first of those, and the decomposition entry says as much itself. The distinction is worth keeping because most agent failures attributed to bad planning are actually the missing third part: a decomposition was produced once and never revisited when reality diverged from it.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to Agent Planning — AI Glossary.
Frequently asked questions
What is Agent Planning?
The process by which an agent decomposes a high-level goal into a sequence of executable sub-tasks.
What concepts are related to Agent Planning?
Closely related concepts include agent, reasoning model, orchestrator agent.