Delivering personal agents will be far harder than any prior AI product category
nickbaumann_ · x · 2026-10-07
nickbaumann argues personal agents for consumers will be infinitely harder to deliver than previous AI categories, despite enormous potential value. He periodizes recent AI history:
- 2022 — ChatGPT (thought partner, novel, fun)
- 2024 — coding harness (powerful, real economic value)
- 2025/6 — work harnesses (coding harness with a veneer)
- 2026 — personal agent harness (coding harness + plugins, its own VM with computer & browser use)
#4 will be BY FAR the hardest: ChatGPT arrived as a non-threatening chatbot; coding tools were embraced by developers and enterprises. Personal agents carry the ultimate promise of AGI but face cold consumers who are:
- leery of granting personal data access (a prerequisite for success)
- feeling threatened by the industry
- unimpressed by capability demos over value
Delivering this value will require extreme empathy toward end customers.
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