Agtivity | Advancing the Science of Software Agent Technology

Definition: Autonomic Software Agent

An autonomic software agent is a software agent which has been initiated indirectly from its ultimate controlling authority, but operates in the interest of that indirect controlling authority, without the indirect controlling authority's direct knowledge of its existence.

So, if entity U initiates agent S which initiates agent T, T can be said to be operating autonomically relative to U, or T is an autonomic software agent and T is an autonomic agent of U.