Is an NDA an intellectual property agreement?

An NDA is not an intellectual property agreement, though the two travel together. An NDA restricts what someone may disclose; an IP agreement decides who owns or may use creative and inventive work. Secrecy versus ownership.

The confusion comes from overlap. NDAs protect trade secrets, which are a form of IP, and most NDAs contain an IPR clause stating that disclosure grants no license or ownership. The information stays the discloser's property; you have simply promised silence.

In practice a contractor relationship needs both instruments: an NDA for what you learn, and an IP assignment or license for what you create. Signing one does not accomplish the other, and assuming it does is how clients discover they never actually owned the code they paid for.

This intellectual property agreement handles the ownership half properly.