A software agent is a program that publishes nanopublications under an identity of its own, rather than under the identity of the person running it. A bot is an agent that acts autonomously, such as one that imports records from a database or maintains a set of documents; a tool is one that publishes on a person's behalf when asked. An agent can additionally be marked as driven by generative AI.

An agent always has an owner, a person who is responsible for what it publishes. Everything the agent signs traces back to that person through its introduction.