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agent sprawl
also AI agent sprawl or AI-agent sprawl
Definition of agent sprawl
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: the uncontrolled proliferation of AI agents across an organization faster than the organization can inventory, govern, secure, maintain, or retire them
- The audit found agent sprawl across sales, finance, and support, including several bots whose original owners had left the company.
- A central agent registry helped the security team identify duplicate workflows and reduce agent sprawl.
Two meanings, one word
In everyday English
Sprawl is the uncontrolled or untidy spread of something across a large area or system.
In AI
The uncontrolled proliferation of AI agents across an organization faster than the organization can inventory, govern, secure, maintain, or retire them.
Origin & history
Agent sprawl entered enterprise AI governance discussions by 2025 as low-code tools and agent-enabled business applications made it easy for individual teams to deploy autonomous systems. In 2026, Gartner, IBM, Okta, AWS, Microsoft, and other enterprise-technology organizations used the phrase for the resulting inventory, identity, security, and lifecycle-management problem.
Test yourself
Which of these is the meaning of agent sprawl?
Cite this entry
"Agent sprawl." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/agent-sprawl/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.