Production lessons: only narrow, boring agents survive — general agents stay brittle
Cold_Hall_5384 · reddit · 2026-09-27
After months trying to build a do-everything agent, the author found only embarrassingly narrow ones stuck in production: one watches a folder and tags files, one drafts replies to a specific email type, one summarizes daily reports.
Key points:
- Narrow agents are easy to trust — predictable behavior, errors instantly visible
- The general agent impressed in demos but was unusable in practice because it was impossible to tell when it went off the rails
- The author asks production users whether their agents are narrow and boring, or if anyone got a broad one to hold up
Related event: Practical Lessons: Narrow Agents Survive, General-Purpose Agents Fail(2 posts)→
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