Agile is not a project management framework and it’s easy to tie oneself in knots trying to understand it through that lens.
Instead, try this:
Agile is the scientific method applied to product development. We start with observation of the customer, their problems & how they use our product, we then formulate a hypothesis about how the product could be better, conduct some experiments, analyze the data, and determine if the hypothesis is correct. In this way, we evolve the product.