Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and the other frontier models are already incredibly good.
They can help you think through a problem, draft an email, summarize a document, analyze data, write code, brainstorm strategy, and explain almost anything. For a lot of people, they already feel like the smartest coworker they’ve ever had.
But on their own, these models are still mostly an engine.
What happens when you give that engine tools, context, and room to run?
Let’s get into it.
This week's take (from our new office!)
The first wave of AI was about answering: draft this email, summarize this doc, analyze this spreadsheet. Incredibly useful, but still reactive. The agent sits in a text box and waits for you to tell it what to do.
The next wave is about doing.
If you give your agent a brain and context, it can answer and draft documents pretty well. But, when you give an agent tools — a computer it can operate, a phone it can send messages from, a system/dashboard it can read and write to, a CRM it can update — it can execute like a teammate.
Live footage of our new office — had to upgrade to give our agents a proper home. Blurring out our agents’ names and numbers to respect their privacy, of course.
Here’s an example:
We've been building a front desk agent for sports clubs. One of the agents' names is Vince. Here's what a real conversation with Vince looks like over iMessage (these are actual screenshots from this week):
Our agent Vince has a phone, a brain, and tools to execute tasks at scale. He’s also extremely responsive, and pretty funny, too.
Russell asks Vince to check court availability. Vince pulls the full schedule. Russell says reach out to Euler about Court 1 next Tuesday at 2pm. Vince drafts the message, asks for approval, sends it directly via iMessage, and later confirms back: "Task #307 filled — Euler said 'Yes, can play.'"
Later that day, Russell tells Vince to let Euler know that it costs $25 to play in the tournament. Vince drafts the message, asks for approval, and sends it.
There's a human in the loop every time. Vince doesn't go rogue. But the coordination (checking schedules, drafting messages, reaching out to specific members, tracking confirmations, following up) is all happening through the agent. Russell is managing a club's front desk operations directly from his phone.
This is obviously a very specific use case. But every business has workflows like this: coordination, follow-ups, scheduling, customer communication – whether you're a restaurant confirming reservations, a real estate firm following up with leads, a medical office managing appointment reminders, a gym coordinating class sign-ups, this is the stuff that eats hours every week and never feels like "real work" but has to get done. The specifics change by industry, but the pattern doesn't. Give an agent the right skills, the right tools, and enough context about how your business actually runs, and you might be surprised by how much of your day you get back, or how many more clients you can take on.
Stay curious,
Julia & Russell
