AI Systems Atlas

S-01Why agents are different

/security/chatbot-vs-agent

The same untrusted input, the same model — but one system emits text and the other emits actions.

Key insight

Security for chatbots is about outputs a human will read. Security for agents is about actions the world will execute. The threat model changes completely.

Failure mode

Treating an agent deployment as “a chatbot with extra features” — the extra features are precisely the attack surface.

Further reading
RelatedIndirect prompt injectionHuman-in-the-loop

Elsewhere in the atlas

Harnesses →Evals →Context →Coding Agents →