An AI agent is software designed to carry out a specific task or series of tasks using engineering data and other tools. For example, one agent might check a drawing against defined standards, another compares product data across revisions, and another can search previous reviews for decisions that apply to the design in front of you. Other agents might do a combination of these tasks in tandem.

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The important distinction is scope. Mechanical engineering is too complicated for one general-purpose “engineering agent” to reliably handle every problem. Complex workflows are better broken into specialized tasks with clear inputs, expected outputs, and points where an engineer reviews the results. As more of those agents are introduced, another challenge appears, which is coordinating them so that each has access to the right product data and engineering context at the right time.

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