Autonomous agents can plan and execute work without requiring a person to guide every step. They may still operate inside boundaries, approval rules, and permissions, but they are designed to move the work forward on their own.
For a small business, full autonomy is not always the right goal. The smarter model is controlled autonomy: let the agent handle low-risk, repeatable work automatically while routing sensitive, expensive, or customer-facing decisions to a human. That balance gives businesses leverage without creating a rogue intern made of math.