Models Don't Have Agency. Systems Do. — a structural take on where agentic behavior really lives
sethjuarez · x · 2026-09-03
In an 18-minute essay, Seth Juarez argues that language models only emit tokens and never gain agency: everything "agentic" comes from a runtime that shapes those tokens into executable intent. Drawing on the philosophy of action, he defines an agent as a being whose actions arise from intention — a test the model itself fails. The key gap: ask a model to book a flight and it produces a friendly sentence a human can act on, but a program can't reliably extract destination, date and time from it. The fix isn't making the model smarter but constraining the shape of what it may say, moving from word to structure to function so the runtime can act. This structured handoff, not the model, is where agency lives.
More from coding & agent
- MCP Platform NitroStack Wins Product Hunt Product of the Day, Focuses on Retention — EstablishmentFun4373 · 2026-10-21
- CodeRabbit Ships 5,000 PRs a Week With a Tiny Team, Hires by Strategy-Game Hours — omojumiller · 2026-10-21
- LukeW maps the five UI problems every AI-native company faces with agents — LukeW · 2026-10-21
- Claude Code over ADB guts a bloatware-laden Android TV, freeing ~90% more RAM — edwinarbus · 2026-10-21
- Developer uses Claude to fix his adware-slowed Xiaomi TV, releases tool for any Android TV — edwinarbus · 2026-10-21
- Open-weights Ornith-1.5-122B debuts with 84.5% SWE-bench Verified, runs on a single DGX card — _akhaliq · 2026-10-21