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AI Agent Glossary

Agent host (runtime)

The application that runs the agent loop, manages context, executes tools and enforces limits.

The host is everything around the model: it assembles the prompt, calls the model, parses tool calls, executes them (locally or via MCP servers), enforces step/cost/time limits, handles approvals and records traces. Claude Code, Cursor, the OpenAI Agents SDK and LangGraph are hosts; the model is interchangeable underneath.

Source: Model Context Protocol — architecture — modelcontextprotocol.io

See the numbers behind this term: AI Agent Statistics 2026.