It's clear to anyone in harness land that there's going to be 6-12 domain specific harnesses that become dominant at the application layer.
One for each major domain and category of human behavior.
If models are intelligence, harnesses are the digital bodies that perform the actually useful work. But in the real world, that work can be extremely different across domains and require fundamentally different "bodies" to be successful.
At @speak, for example, we're building what we think of as the world's best teaching harness: specialized skills for curriculum planning and feedback, a huge swath of tools for interactive lessons, longitudinal learner memory, and validated proficiency assessment backed by 3rd party studies.
These tools mean that we build trust that we'll actually help you achieve your goal in the long run and our system is accountable for it.
One for each major domain and category of human behavior.
If models are intelligence, harnesses are the digital bodies that perform the actually useful work. But in the real world, that work can be extremely different across domains and require fundamentally different "bodies" to be successful.
At @speak, for example, we're building what we think of as the world's best teaching harness: specialized skills for curriculum planning and feedback, a huge swath of tools for interactive lessons, longitudinal learner memory, and validated proficiency assessment backed by 3rd party studies.
These tools mean that we build trust that we'll actually help you achieve your goal in the long run and our system is accountable for it.
Gokul Rajaram@gokulr · Oct 7Vertical personal agents and account ownership
I don't buy that there will be one general-purpose personal agent. I think there will be specific agents for:
•productivity / work
•food and grocery
•money
•health
Each of these will be owned by whoever controls the system of record and the right to act. Take money. The money agent should be your bank account and execute transactions on your behalf. It has the ledger, the license, the fraud models, and the liability when something goes wrong. A general agent that "logs into" your bank is a screen scraper with ambition. The bank that becomes an agent is the agent.
The same pattern repeats:
•Food and grocery: Whoever owns the cart, the inventory, and the last mile. The agent knows what's in your fridge because it put it there.
•Health: Whoever holds your records, your labs, and a relationship with a licensed provider. Advice without the chart is a guess. Action without a license is a lawsuit.
•Productivity / work: Whoever owns your calendar, inbox, and docs. Context is the moat, and it already lives somewhere.
Agents win on three things: data, permission, and accountability. A horizontal agent can borrow the first, beg for the second, and has none of the third.
Trust isn't general either. I'll let an agent book my dinner without asking. I won't let the same agent wire $50K or change my medication. Each domain has its own risk tolerance, its own regulation, and its own definition of "done." One agent can't hold all of those thresholds at once.
The general-purpose agent doesn't disappear. It becomes the router. It's the front desk that knows which specialist to call. That's a real product, but it's thin. Routers commoditize, and the specialists capture the value.
The question isn't "who builds the best assistant?" It's "who owns the account the assistant acts on?" The incumbents with licenses and ledgers have a bigger head start than they realize. The startups that win will either become the system of record in a vertical or make themselves impossible to route around.
The future isn't one agent that does everything. It's a handful of agents that each own something.
Open quoted post →I don't buy that there will be one general-purpose personal agent. I think there will be specific agents for:
•productivity / work
•food and grocery
•money
•health
Each of these will be owned by whoever controls the system of record and the right to act. Take money. The money agent should be your bank account and execute transactions on your behalf. It has the ledger, the license, the fraud models, and the liability when something goes wrong. A general agent that "logs into" your bank is a screen scraper with ambition. The bank that becomes an agent is the agent.
The same pattern repeats:
•Food and grocery: Whoever owns the cart, the inventory, and the last mile. The agent knows what's in your fridge because it put it there.
•Health: Whoever holds your records, your labs, and a relationship with a licensed provider. Advice without the chart is a guess. Action without a license is a lawsuit.
•Productivity / work: Whoever owns your calendar, inbox, and docs. Context is the moat, and it already lives somewhere.
Agents win on three things: data, permission, and accountability. A horizontal agent can borrow the first, beg for the second, and has none of the third.
Trust isn't general either. I'll let an agent book my dinner without asking. I won't let the same agent wire $50K or change my medication. Each domain has its own risk tolerance, its own regulation, and its own definition of "done." One agent can't hold all of those thresholds at once.
The general-purpose agent doesn't disappear. It becomes the router. It's the front desk that knows which specialist to call. That's a real product, but it's thin. Routers commoditize, and the specialists capture the value.
The question isn't "who builds the best assistant?" It's "who owns the account the assistant acts on?" The incumbents with licenses and ledgers have a bigger head start than they realize. The startups that win will either become the system of record in a vertical or make themselves impossible to route around.
The future isn't one agent that does everything. It's a handful of agents that each own something.
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Andrew Hsu
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Wouter Teunissen
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