isr.co.ro : glossary Agent A program that performs a task on your behalf (or the behalf of another user, system administrator or the network itself). Particularly, a program that does this without requiring immediate attention from a human during the process. For example, a mail agent might collect e-mail messages from your multiple Internet accounts, arrange them in one list and sort them according to a set of rules you provide. A stockmarket agent might monitor the price of selected shares for variations that should be brought to your attention. The idea of "intelligent" agents that can be "set loose" on the Net to do your tasks is a hot topic in software development. So far, at least, there's more promise in this area than there are deployable results.