Loading video...

Video Failed to Load

Go Home

HARNESS vs LOOP vs GRAPH ➜ STOP MIXING THEM UP Most people treat these three as the same thing. They’re not 1\ Harness = the machinery around the model (tools, state, permissions, memory, sandboxes, observability) 2\ Loop = the repeated work + evidence + feedback cycle with clear stop...

beamnxw's profile picture

beamnxw ./

5,711 subscribers

19,471 views • 1 month ago •via X (Twitter)

LIVE

Anya Rossi• Live Now

Private livecam show

0 Comments

No comments available

Comments from the original post will appear here

Related Videos

the loop is not the whole agent it is only one layer of the system LOOP vs GRAPH vs HARNESS ENGINEERING LOOP ENGINEERING controls iteration turns retries budgets stop conditions success checks stalled progress use durable execution when the run must survive crashes → GRAPH ENGINEERING controls structure nodes edges state branches checkpoints routing handoffs build stateful agents as explicit graphs → inspect the topology without putting a model in the loop → HARNESS ENGINEERING controls exposure tools permissions memory sandboxes evals traces humans isolate generated code from the host machine → test behavior before users ever see it → preserve one trace across every model step and tool call → without loop control it keeps running without graph structure the path stays invisible without harness control it can reach anything the loop runs inside the graph the graph runs inside the harness the model is only one component debug the layer that actually owns the failure save this then read the article below
0:20

the loop is not the whole agent it is only one layer of the system LOOP vs GRAPH vs HARNESS ENGINEERING LOOP ENGINEERING controls iteration turns retries budgets stop conditions success checks stalled progress use durable execution when the run must survive crashes → GRAPH ENGINEERING controls structure nodes edges state branches checkpoints routing handoffs build stateful agents as explicit graphs → inspect the topology without putting a model in the loop → HARNESS ENGINEERING controls exposure tools permissions memory sandboxes evals traces humans isolate generated code from the host machine → test behavior before users ever see it → preserve one trace across every model step and tool call → without loop control it keeps running without graph structure the path stays invisible without harness control it can reach anything the loop runs inside the graph the graph runs inside the harness the model is only one component debug the layer that actually owns the failure save this then read the article below

rari

20,934 views • 1 month ago

MOST PEOPLE BUILD AI AGENTS BACKWARDS. They start with prompts, then add tools, memory, subagents, dashboards, and a graph nobody can debug. Then they wonder why the agent is expensive, confused, and unreliable. The better order is simple: harness first loop second graph only when needed A harness gives the model a workspace, tools, permissions, logs, and a definition of done. A loop lets it try, fail, read feedback, repair, and stop. A graph only makes sense when the workflow branches: approvals, parallel work, durable state, different routes, restart recovery. A graph is not a smarter prompt. A loop is not a production system. A harness is not just a system prompt. Most agents do not fail because the model is weak. They fail because nobody defined what success means.
2:07

MOST PEOPLE BUILD AI AGENTS BACKWARDS. They start with prompts, then add tools, memory, subagents, dashboards, and a graph nobody can debug. Then they wonder why the agent is expensive, confused, and unreliable. The better order is simple: harness first loop second graph only when needed A harness gives the model a workspace, tools, permissions, logs, and a definition of done. A loop lets it try, fail, read feedback, repair, and stop. A graph only makes sense when the workflow branches: approvals, parallel work, durable state, different routes, restart recovery. A graph is not a smarter prompt. A loop is not a production system. A harness is not just a system prompt. Most agents do not fail because the model is weak. They fail because nobody defined what success means.

Fluixo

11,303 views • 1 month ago

FIVE LAYERS OF AGENT ENGINEERING, EACH ONE WRAPS THE ONE BELOW IT. IF YOU SKIP LAYER 2, YOUR LAYER 5 WILL LOOK BROKEN WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY JUST STANDING ON NOTHING. for weeks i debated harness vs loop vs graph like they were competing choices. then a stack diagram made the shape obvious. they are not choices. they are floors. 01 | prompt engineering. the message. unit of work: one input. inputs are role, instructions, examples, format. output is a single raw response. 02 | context engineering. the memory. unit of work: what stays in the window. a curator selects, compresses, and drops from query, docs, memory, prior turns, and tool outputs before the prompt runs. 03 | harness engineering. the machine. unit of work: the machine itself. gather (context + prompt) → LLM → tools or sub-agents → verifier → final response. the article calls this the operating environment. 04 | loop engineering. the system. unit of work: the run. goal + success criteria + max iterations + budget + completion check wrap around one harness pass. failed pass appends results to context and retries. 05 | graph engineering. the topology. unit of work: the graph run. goal + nodes + edges + state schema. graph routes to agent nodes, tool nodes, or human approval. a reviewer node with a different model and fresh context checks the final answer. the wrapping is the whole point. layer 5 assumes layer 4 works. layer 4 assumes layer 3 works. skip layer 2 and layer 3's verifier keeps failing without a clear reason. this is why swapping the model is a one-day project and swapping the stack is a quarter. the model is the commodity. the five layers around it are the engineering. full three-layer breakdown of the top of the stack (harness, loop, graph) in the post below.
0:20

FIVE LAYERS OF AGENT ENGINEERING, EACH ONE WRAPS THE ONE BELOW IT. IF YOU SKIP LAYER 2, YOUR LAYER 5 WILL LOOK BROKEN WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY JUST STANDING ON NOTHING. for weeks i debated harness vs loop vs graph like they were competing choices. then a stack diagram made the shape obvious. they are not choices. they are floors. 01 | prompt engineering. the message. unit of work: one input. inputs are role, instructions, examples, format. output is a single raw response. 02 | context engineering. the memory. unit of work: what stays in the window. a curator selects, compresses, and drops from query, docs, memory, prior turns, and tool outputs before the prompt runs. 03 | harness engineering. the machine. unit of work: the machine itself. gather (context + prompt) → LLM → tools or sub-agents → verifier → final response. the article calls this the operating environment. 04 | loop engineering. the system. unit of work: the run. goal + success criteria + max iterations + budget + completion check wrap around one harness pass. failed pass appends results to context and retries. 05 | graph engineering. the topology. unit of work: the graph run. goal + nodes + edges + state schema. graph routes to agent nodes, tool nodes, or human approval. a reviewer node with a different model and fresh context checks the final answer. the wrapping is the whole point. layer 5 assumes layer 4 works. layer 4 assumes layer 3 works. skip layer 2 and layer 3's verifier keeps failing without a clear reason. this is why swapping the model is a one-day project and swapping the stack is a quarter. the model is the commodity. the five layers around it are the engineering. full three-layer breakdown of the top of the stack (harness, loop, graph) in the post below.

kocer

30,675 views • 11 days ago

Google's team published a 9-page PDF on Harness Engineering. one formula replaced prompt engineering: Agent = Model + Harness the twist: same Claude Sonnet, same benchmark. change only the harness the playbook, six steps: step 1 -> add guides AGENTS.md, rule files, constraint docs. every line is a past agent failure turned into a permanent fix step 2 -> add sensors linters, tests, validation scripts the agent runs on its own output before a human sees it step 3 -> build the agentic loop plan, execute, verify, fix. bounded retries, budget caps, escalation when stuck step 4 -> externalize memory the model forgets every session. the harness holds state, decisions and artifacts across all of them step 5 -> enforce permissions which tools, how many writes, what needs approval. safety lives in the harness, never in the model step 6 -> wire observability track every tool call, cost and retry. trip wires fire when behavior drifts the result: your agent turns from a demo into infrastructure every failure makes the system permanently better, not just the next conversation that's also the line between an agent you show people and one a client pays you to leave running one harness gets you a reliable loop. connect several and it becomes graph engineering, where one agent's failure turns into another agent's sensor the PDF stops at the harness. the graph is the next layer that breakdown, running on Kimi, is below ↓
0:24

Google's team published a 9-page PDF on Harness Engineering. one formula replaced prompt engineering: Agent = Model + Harness the twist: same Claude Sonnet, same benchmark. change only the harness the playbook, six steps: step 1 -> add guides AGENTS.md, rule files, constraint docs. every line is a past agent failure turned into a permanent fix step 2 -> add sensors linters, tests, validation scripts the agent runs on its own output before a human sees it step 3 -> build the agentic loop plan, execute, verify, fix. bounded retries, budget caps, escalation when stuck step 4 -> externalize memory the model forgets every session. the harness holds state, decisions and artifacts across all of them step 5 -> enforce permissions which tools, how many writes, what needs approval. safety lives in the harness, never in the model step 6 -> wire observability track every tool call, cost and retry. trip wires fire when behavior drifts the result: your agent turns from a demo into infrastructure every failure makes the system permanently better, not just the next conversation that's also the line between an agent you show people and one a client pays you to leave running one harness gets you a reliable loop. connect several and it becomes graph engineering, where one agent's failure turns into another agent's sensor the PDF stops at the harness. the graph is the next layer that breakdown, running on Kimi, is below ↓

Annatar.md

72,865 views • 2 days ago

Andrew Ng just released a free 2-hour course on complete Harness Engineering How to go from one prompt to a reliable system of agents that can run, test, and improve themselves: 09:14 - Build your first agent from scratch 33:11 - Master agent loops 1:02:46 - Turn loops into reliable workflows 1:30:15 - Build agents that improve their own work 1:49:05 - Run the complete system without supervision Model → Harness → Reliable Software Most agent tutorials stop once the model can call a tool This one shows you how to build the infrastructure around it within the first 20 minutes Most people are still prompting one agent at a time Andrew Ng is already teaching the layer above: Harnesses that give agents context, tools, tests, and feedback Watch this brilliant course and build the harness Then read the full architecture below ↓
1:48:52

Andrew Ng just released a free 2-hour course on complete Harness Engineering How to go from one prompt to a reliable system of agents that can run, test, and improve themselves: 09:14 - Build your first agent from scratch 33:11 - Master agent loops 1:02:46 - Turn loops into reliable workflows 1:30:15 - Build agents that improve their own work 1:49:05 - Run the complete system without supervision Model → Harness → Reliable Software Most agent tutorials stop once the model can call a tool This one shows you how to build the infrastructure around it within the first 20 minutes Most people are still prompting one agent at a time Andrew Ng is already teaching the layer above: Harnesses that give agents context, tools, tests, and feedback Watch this brilliant course and build the harness Then read the full architecture below ↓

Ichigo

98,000 views • 6 days ago

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman explains how to use LLMs better than almost anyone by building loops and graphs that write prompts for you In this 78-minute talk, he shows exactly how to go from basic prompting to systems that can run without you step 1 → start with prompts - give the model context, instructions, and a clear goal step 2 → turn prompts into agents - add tools and actions so the model can actually do the work step 3 → put agents inside loops - let them run, check results, and prompt themselves again step 4 → connect those loops into graphs - decide which agent runs next based on what happened before step 5 → let the graph keep running without you - same model, same tokens, completely different workflow Prompts → Agents → Loops → Graphs Most people stop after writing a good prompt You don't have to Watch it, bookmark it, then read the full graph engineering guide below ↓
1:16:50

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman explains how to use LLMs better than almost anyone by building loops and graphs that write prompts for you In this 78-minute talk, he shows exactly how to go from basic prompting to systems that can run without you step 1 → start with prompts - give the model context, instructions, and a clear goal step 2 → turn prompts into agents - add tools and actions so the model can actually do the work step 3 → put agents inside loops - let them run, check results, and prompt themselves again step 4 → connect those loops into graphs - decide which agent runs next based on what happened before step 5 → let the graph keep running without you - same model, same tokens, completely different workflow Prompts → Agents → Loops → Graphs Most people stop after writing a good prompt You don't have to Watch it, bookmark it, then read the full graph engineering guide below ↓

Lunar

25,298 views • 3 days ago

Creator of agent loops: "Anthropic also using my agent systems formula and still the biggest mistake in agents: is skipping Graphs" his 3 rules for every agent: rule 1 → loop it, don't run once - think, act, observe, repeat - cut the context and it forgets why it started rule 2 → an agent is memory + tools + reasoning - drop one and it breaks rule 3 → stop fine-tuning the model - the real alpha is the infrastructure around it the formula behind every AI agent - explained by the one who wrote it one agent → a loop → a graph of loops → a system that never forgets watch & bookmark - then read how to wire it into a graph ↓
45:37

Creator of agent loops: "Anthropic also using my agent systems formula and still the biggest mistake in agents: is skipping Graphs" his 3 rules for every agent: rule 1 → loop it, don't run once - think, act, observe, repeat - cut the context and it forgets why it started rule 2 → an agent is memory + tools + reasoning - drop one and it breaks rule 3 → stop fine-tuning the model - the real alpha is the infrastructure around it the formula behind every AI agent - explained by the one who wrote it one agent → a loop → a graph of loops → a system that never forgets watch & bookmark - then read how to wire it into a graph ↓

codila

23,915 views • 1 month ago

Loops vs. Graphs, clearly explained! loops are great, but they have a ceiling: a loop makes one unit of work better. it cannot decide which units exist. so you end up with a very good agent running the wrong three steps, in the wrong order, one at a time. Graph engineering fixes this by moving the decision up a layer: what runs, what runs at the same time, and what never runs at all. you need both. here's how it works: a graph splits your system into two kinds of decision. ↳ inside a unit: the loop. produce, check, correct, repeat until green ↳ between units: the graph. split, fan out, merge, gate, send back Prompts → Context → Harness → Loops → Graphs you get parallel work, isolated contexts, and steps that stop running when nothing needs them. the trick is being selective about what becomes a node. only spend a model where judgment lives. merging, ranking, deduping and schema checks are edges, and edges are code. free, instant, and they cannot be argued out of a verdict. a graph where every edge is an agent pays rent on its own wiring. one thing to know before you scale it. a graph has two return paths, and almost everyone builds one. ↳ the correction edge is short. a gate rejects one unit back to the step that produced it, and it fixes the run you are in ↳ the learning edge is long. an accepted result goes back to the splitter as a constraint, and it fixes every run after skip the second and you get a graph that is fast and never gets smarter. next week it starts from the same place with the same blind spots. and a smaller one that eats whole nights: when a unit fails, return that unit, not the batch. send back four slices because one failed and you have just rewritten three correct ones. do it twice in a run and the run never converges. below i have quoted my full guide on graph engineering. it covers the three topologies, the verifier patterns, and where the gate should actually open. save this and read it below ↓
0:41

Loops vs. Graphs, clearly explained! loops are great, but they have a ceiling: a loop makes one unit of work better. it cannot decide which units exist. so you end up with a very good agent running the wrong three steps, in the wrong order, one at a time. Graph engineering fixes this by moving the decision up a layer: what runs, what runs at the same time, and what never runs at all. you need both. here's how it works: a graph splits your system into two kinds of decision. ↳ inside a unit: the loop. produce, check, correct, repeat until green ↳ between units: the graph. split, fan out, merge, gate, send back Prompts → Context → Harness → Loops → Graphs you get parallel work, isolated contexts, and steps that stop running when nothing needs them. the trick is being selective about what becomes a node. only spend a model where judgment lives. merging, ranking, deduping and schema checks are edges, and edges are code. free, instant, and they cannot be argued out of a verdict. a graph where every edge is an agent pays rent on its own wiring. one thing to know before you scale it. a graph has two return paths, and almost everyone builds one. ↳ the correction edge is short. a gate rejects one unit back to the step that produced it, and it fixes the run you are in ↳ the learning edge is long. an accepted result goes back to the splitter as a constraint, and it fixes every run after skip the second and you get a graph that is fast and never gets smarter. next week it starts from the same place with the same blind spots. and a smaller one that eats whole nights: when a unit fails, return that unit, not the batch. send back four slices because one failed and you have just rewritten three correct ones. do it twice in a run and the run never converges. below i have quoted my full guide on graph engineering. it covers the three topologies, the verifier patterns, and where the gate should actually open. save this and read it below ↓

Hanako

73,867 views • 21 days ago

Loops vs. Graphs, clearly explained! loops are great, and they have a ceiling you can watch happen: a loop goes around. it produces, checks, corrects, and goes around again. after six passes you have one job, done very well. after six hundred passes you still have one job, done very well. Graph engineering fixes this by moving the decision up a layer: not how well one job gets done, but which jobs exist to be done at all. you need both, and here is the sentence that resolves the whole confusion: the loop lives inside a node. the graph lives between them. ↳ inside one unit: produce, check, correct, repeat until green ↳ between units: split, fan out, merge, gate, send back Prompts → Context → Harness → Loops → Graphs the loop does not go away when you build a graph. it moves inside, and now there are three of them running at once on three things you would never have thought to run. the trick is being selective about what becomes a node. only spend a model where judgment lives. merging, ranking, deduping and schema checks are edges, and edges are code. free, instant, and they cannot be argued out of a verdict. one thing to know before you scale it. a loop that cannot fail is not a loop, it is a repeat with a bill attached. and the check people write is almost always the wrong kind. ↳ the test suite exits 0 is a check. the diff touches only the files in the plan is a check ↳ the output looks good, the model says it is confident, no errors were raised, none of those are checks that last one catches careful people. absence of an error is not evidence of correctness, and a loop built on it will confidently repeat a mistake until the budget runs out, with a clean log the whole way. and the one that eats whole nights: when a unit fails, return that unit, not the batch. send back four slices because one failed and you have just rewritten three correct ones. do it twice in a run and the run never converges. below i have quoted my full guide on graph engineering. it covers the three topologies, the verifier patterns, and where the gate should actually open. save this and read it below ↓
0:50

Loops vs. Graphs, clearly explained! loops are great, and they have a ceiling you can watch happen: a loop goes around. it produces, checks, corrects, and goes around again. after six passes you have one job, done very well. after six hundred passes you still have one job, done very well. Graph engineering fixes this by moving the decision up a layer: not how well one job gets done, but which jobs exist to be done at all. you need both, and here is the sentence that resolves the whole confusion: the loop lives inside a node. the graph lives between them. ↳ inside one unit: produce, check, correct, repeat until green ↳ between units: split, fan out, merge, gate, send back Prompts → Context → Harness → Loops → Graphs the loop does not go away when you build a graph. it moves inside, and now there are three of them running at once on three things you would never have thought to run. the trick is being selective about what becomes a node. only spend a model where judgment lives. merging, ranking, deduping and schema checks are edges, and edges are code. free, instant, and they cannot be argued out of a verdict. one thing to know before you scale it. a loop that cannot fail is not a loop, it is a repeat with a bill attached. and the check people write is almost always the wrong kind. ↳ the test suite exits 0 is a check. the diff touches only the files in the plan is a check ↳ the output looks good, the model says it is confident, no errors were raised, none of those are checks that last one catches careful people. absence of an error is not evidence of correctness, and a loop built on it will confidently repeat a mistake until the budget runs out, with a clean log the whole way. and the one that eats whole nights: when a unit fails, return that unit, not the batch. send back four slices because one failed and you have just rewritten three correct ones. do it twice in a run and the run never converges. below i have quoted my full guide on graph engineering. it covers the three topologies, the verifier patterns, and where the gate should actually open. save this and read it below ↓

Hanako

126,894 views • 5 days ago

Loved this 22-minute talk on continual learning for AI agents. Must watch for anyone looking to get agents performant and into production. Credit: Soheil Feizi at AI Engineer • Agent learning can happen at three layers: the model (weights), the harness (prompts, tools, skills, code, workflows), and memory (session or persistent). • Two fundamental challenges: (1) getting feedback, meaning how do we know if the agent did well and what it should have done instead, and (2) acting on that feedback, meaning deciding which layer or component to change and how. • Feedback sources differ by stage: In development you have benchmarks with evaluators that score pass/fail. In production you only have logs, which can be judged either automatically (LLMs or code analyzing the log, which is scalable) or by human experts (low volume but critical domain knowledge). • Logs plus feedback aren't enough because they're not testable: A single log with feedback is one observation of what happened. You need to lift it into a replayable learning environment, a simulation with tools, users, and defined evaluators, so candidate fixes can be run, verified, and compared. • Three ways to optimize the agent, with tradeoffs: Model-layer updates (SFT, RL post-training like DPO/GRPO, LoRA) are expensive and need benchmarks and evaluators. Harness updates (trace-to-harness coding agents, prompt search like GEPA) are flexible but either untestable and "vibe-based" or benchmark-dependent. Memory updates (fact storage like Letta/Mem0, skill distillation) are cheapest and fastest but usually unverified. • A good learning engine makes "the smallest durable change at the right layer" of the agent. • Verifiable continual learning (VCL): Improve an agent from its own experience where every fix is proven to help and proven to break nothing that already worked. It requires an executable test (replayable failure), a measured delta (score before and after), and regression tests (prior tests still pass). • Four principles of practical VCL: Replayability (turn one-off failures into rerunnable tests), holisticness (one failure can have causes in memory, prompts, tools, workflow, or model, so route the fix to the right layer), lifelongness (fix new failures subject to no regression on past environments, with regression handled inside the optimization loop rather than post-hoc), and efficiency (the loop must run frequently and cheaply, without scaling linearly as past environments accumulate). • Three takeaways: (1) Agent continual learning isn't necessarily fine-tuning; many useful updates live in the harness and memory layers. (2) Production logs are not learning environments and must be transformed into replayable ones. (3) The frontier is regression-aware improvement: fixing new failures while verifying you don't break old ones.
22:34

Loved this 22-minute talk on continual learning for AI agents. Must watch for anyone looking to get agents performant and into production. Credit: Soheil Feizi at AI Engineer • Agent learning can happen at three layers: the model (weights), the harness (prompts, tools, skills, code, workflows), and memory (session or persistent). • Two fundamental challenges: (1) getting feedback, meaning how do we know if the agent did well and what it should have done instead, and (2) acting on that feedback, meaning deciding which layer or component to change and how. • Feedback sources differ by stage: In development you have benchmarks with evaluators that score pass/fail. In production you only have logs, which can be judged either automatically (LLMs or code analyzing the log, which is scalable) or by human experts (low volume but critical domain knowledge). • Logs plus feedback aren't enough because they're not testable: A single log with feedback is one observation of what happened. You need to lift it into a replayable learning environment, a simulation with tools, users, and defined evaluators, so candidate fixes can be run, verified, and compared. • Three ways to optimize the agent, with tradeoffs: Model-layer updates (SFT, RL post-training like DPO/GRPO, LoRA) are expensive and need benchmarks and evaluators. Harness updates (trace-to-harness coding agents, prompt search like GEPA) are flexible but either untestable and "vibe-based" or benchmark-dependent. Memory updates (fact storage like Letta/Mem0, skill distillation) are cheapest and fastest but usually unverified. • A good learning engine makes "the smallest durable change at the right layer" of the agent. • Verifiable continual learning (VCL): Improve an agent from its own experience where every fix is proven to help and proven to break nothing that already worked. It requires an executable test (replayable failure), a measured delta (score before and after), and regression tests (prior tests still pass). • Four principles of practical VCL: Replayability (turn one-off failures into rerunnable tests), holisticness (one failure can have causes in memory, prompts, tools, workflow, or model, so route the fix to the right layer), lifelongness (fix new failures subject to no regression on past environments, with regression handled inside the optimization loop rather than post-hoc), and efficiency (the loop must run frequently and cheaply, without scaling linearly as past environments accumulate). • Three takeaways: (1) Agent continual learning isn't necessarily fine-tuning; many useful updates live in the harness and memory layers. (2) Production logs are not learning environments and must be transformed into replayable ones. (3) The frontier is regression-aware improvement: fixing new failures while verifying you don't break old ones.

Alex Lieberman

20,417 views • 2 months ago

The entire AI industry is racing to build the smartest model. Satya Nadella just admitted that is not where the money is. The model is not the product. The harness is. That is the exact line. And it changes what Microsoft is actually competing on. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Meta every frontier lab is pouring hundreds of billions into training compute, chasing the next capability jump. Each betting that raw model intelligence is the moat. Microsoft is doing the opposite. It is building the harness the orchestration layer that sits above the model, connecting it to tools, data, permissions, sub-agents, and enterprise workflows. And it is letting OpenAI, Anthropic, and MAI compete to plug into it. "You need the model. But the model is not the product. The harness is." So do the math on what a harness actually does. A raw model dropped into an enterprise answers questions. That is a chatbot. A harness turns that same model into an agent that reads the SharePoint, edits the ERP entry, pulls the GitHub PR, updates Salesforce, and files the Excel report with the right permissions, the right audit trail, and the right sub-agent for each sub-task. The model provides the intelligence. The harness converts intelligence into work. Now here's where it gets interesting. "Even the best model in the world will feel broken without a great harness. And an okay model with a great harness can feel like magic." If that is true, the enterprise buyer is not buying model quality. The enterprise buyer is buying the harness. Which means model quality becomes a commodity input over time, and harness quality becomes the sustainable moat. Compare that to the strategy the entire frontier lab industry is executing. Everyone else is chasing the numerator raw intelligence. Almost nobody at scale is racing to build the denominator the orchestration layer that determines whether that intelligence can actually be deployed profitably inside a real company. The frontier model race has a 10 to 20 percent chance of producing a single dominant winner. Nadella just told the industry he does not need to be that winner. If OpenAI wins, Microsoft wins. If Anthropic wins, Microsoft wins. If MAI wins, Microsoft wins. If someone Microsoft has never heard of trains a better model in 2027, Microsoft still wins. Because the compute they train on, the harness they get plugged into, the enterprise contracts they get delivered through, and the products they sit inside are all Microsoft. He is not building the best AI model. He is building the layer that the best AI model has to run on to make anyone money. I wonder which position looks more valuable in ten years.
3:19

The entire AI industry is racing to build the smartest model. Satya Nadella just admitted that is not where the money is. The model is not the product. The harness is. That is the exact line. And it changes what Microsoft is actually competing on. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Meta every frontier lab is pouring hundreds of billions into training compute, chasing the next capability jump. Each betting that raw model intelligence is the moat. Microsoft is doing the opposite. It is building the harness the orchestration layer that sits above the model, connecting it to tools, data, permissions, sub-agents, and enterprise workflows. And it is letting OpenAI, Anthropic, and MAI compete to plug into it. "You need the model. But the model is not the product. The harness is." So do the math on what a harness actually does. A raw model dropped into an enterprise answers questions. That is a chatbot. A harness turns that same model into an agent that reads the SharePoint, edits the ERP entry, pulls the GitHub PR, updates Salesforce, and files the Excel report with the right permissions, the right audit trail, and the right sub-agent for each sub-task. The model provides the intelligence. The harness converts intelligence into work. Now here's where it gets interesting. "Even the best model in the world will feel broken without a great harness. And an okay model with a great harness can feel like magic." If that is true, the enterprise buyer is not buying model quality. The enterprise buyer is buying the harness. Which means model quality becomes a commodity input over time, and harness quality becomes the sustainable moat. Compare that to the strategy the entire frontier lab industry is executing. Everyone else is chasing the numerator raw intelligence. Almost nobody at scale is racing to build the denominator the orchestration layer that determines whether that intelligence can actually be deployed profitably inside a real company. The frontier model race has a 10 to 20 percent chance of producing a single dominant winner. Nadella just told the industry he does not need to be that winner. If OpenAI wins, Microsoft wins. If Anthropic wins, Microsoft wins. If MAI wins, Microsoft wins. If someone Microsoft has never heard of trains a better model in 2027, Microsoft still wins. Because the compute they train on, the harness they get plugged into, the enterprise contracts they get delivered through, and the products they sit inside are all Microsoft. He is not building the best AI model. He is building the layer that the best AI model has to run on to make anyone money. I wonder which position looks more valuable in ten years.

Vikram M

21,463 views • 2 months ago

your agent loop needs 8 exits. most people ship only one. (explained with triggers) 1) goal met → an evaluator scores the output against a rubric, and the run stops on a pass. → fires when the work is measurably done, not when the model says it is done. 2) turn cap → a hard ceiling on iterations, counted and enforced by the harness, not the prompt. → fires on the task it was never going to finish, before you pay to find that out. 3) budget cap → a limit on tokens or dollars, whichever one runs out first. → fires mid-run, which is exactly why it is the exit that saves you the 3am bill. 4) wall clock → a deadline on elapsed time, independent of how much progress was made. → fires when the run collides with a deploy window or the start of business hours. 5) no progress → hash the state every turn and compare it against the last few. → fires when three turns in a row change nothing. busy is not the same as moving. 6) human interrupt → an approval gate before risky steps, plus a kill switch that lives outside the loop. → fires whenever you decide, and it is the one exit the model cannot argue with. 7) error threshold → a counter of consecutive failures that resets on any success. → fires at n in a row, so it halts instead of retrying into the same wall all night. 8) external event → a webhook or a poll on whatever the task was actually about. → fires when the PR merged or the ticket closed and the work stopped mattering. a loop with one exit hangs. a loop with eight is a system. write the exits before you write the prompt.
0:40

your agent loop needs 8 exits. most people ship only one. (explained with triggers) 1) goal met → an evaluator scores the output against a rubric, and the run stops on a pass. → fires when the work is measurably done, not when the model says it is done. 2) turn cap → a hard ceiling on iterations, counted and enforced by the harness, not the prompt. → fires on the task it was never going to finish, before you pay to find that out. 3) budget cap → a limit on tokens or dollars, whichever one runs out first. → fires mid-run, which is exactly why it is the exit that saves you the 3am bill. 4) wall clock → a deadline on elapsed time, independent of how much progress was made. → fires when the run collides with a deploy window or the start of business hours. 5) no progress → hash the state every turn and compare it against the last few. → fires when three turns in a row change nothing. busy is not the same as moving. 6) human interrupt → an approval gate before risky steps, plus a kill switch that lives outside the loop. → fires whenever you decide, and it is the one exit the model cannot argue with. 7) error threshold → a counter of consecutive failures that resets on any success. → fires at n in a row, so it halts instead of retrying into the same wall all night. 8) external event → a webhook or a poll on whatever the task was actually about. → fires when the PR merged or the ticket closed and the work stopped mattering. a loop with one exit hangs. a loop with eight is a system. write the exits before you write the prompt.

Hanako

181,823 views • 1 month ago

one agent → a loop → a graph → a system that throttles itself Google just put the whole ladder in one free course. most people never leave the first rung. 2 hours 4 minutes, taught by two Google Cloud engineers. no signup, no paywall. 17:55 - build your first agent 39:55 - loop engineering: iterate, check, break 1:13:25 - graph engineering 1:35:27 - agents that throttle themselves 1:56:19 - the full graph for multi-agent systems the fourth one is the step nobody talks about. an agent that cannot throttle itself is not autonomous, it is just unattended. everyone builds one agent and calls it done. this is the version where the agents wire themselves into a graph and decide their own rate. and the thing that decides when one of them is allowed to stop is not in the course. that part you build yourself. bookmark and watch it today, then read the eval setup below
2:04:19

one agent → a loop → a graph → a system that throttles itself Google just put the whole ladder in one free course. most people never leave the first rung. 2 hours 4 minutes, taught by two Google Cloud engineers. no signup, no paywall. 17:55 - build your first agent 39:55 - loop engineering: iterate, check, break 1:13:25 - graph engineering 1:35:27 - agents that throttle themselves 1:56:19 - the full graph for multi-agent systems the fourth one is the step nobody talks about. an agent that cannot throttle itself is not autonomous, it is just unattended. everyone builds one agent and calls it done. this is the version where the agents wire themselves into a graph and decide their own rate. and the thing that decides when one of them is allowed to stop is not in the course. that part you build yourself. bookmark and watch it today, then read the eval setup below

Hanako

53,692 views • 1 month ago

Sam Altman made the case for open-source harnesses in July. a month later, someone shipped it, and it's more efficient than most managed harnesses. here is the problem it was aimed at: a large share of your agent's token bill is the model rereading things it already read. that isn't the model's doing. the runtime around it decides what goes into every prompt and how often the model gets called. for example, an agent queries a CRM at step four and gets back 400 rows. those rows get piled up in the conversation history. by step nineteen, the model has to read those rows fifteen times unnecessarily, and every token read is billed at input rates. it happened because your harness assembled that prompt on every turn and kept the rows in it. that gives you two levers: how much context the harness carries forward, and how often it calls the model. there are four practical ways to keep the prompt from growing unnecessarily: → load tool schemas on demand. a server with 100 tools doesn't need to put all 100 into every prompt when the agent only calls two. → offload large results to disk. turn a large response into a short preview and a file path instead of replaying the entire result on every turn. → delegate to subagents. let a subagent spend thirty tool calls in its own context and return one summary to the root agent. → run toolchains in code. one script calls three tools, joins the results, and returns a table instead of three turns each dragging a full response. but reducing context is only half the job. you also need to control how often the model gets called. a good harness should avoid unnecessary planning, verification, and reflection when the work can be completed in fewer steps. TrueFoundry's open-source agent harness, TrueForge, is built around both of those controls. it sits between the model and the tools, deciding what goes into every prompt and when another model call is actually needed. it also breaks token usage down across the harness, skills, instructions, tools, and messages. DevRev's Enterprise-Bench is where this gets tested, on multi-step tasks of the kind where an agent pulls records from one system and reconciles them against another. TrueFoundry ran TrueForge there against Claude Managed Agents, both on the same model, and both finished the same number of tasks. the tie is the part that matters, because it means the gap underneath is not a quality tradeoff. TrueForge reached that score on close to a third of the tokens, with roughly 40% fewer trips back to the model. for the same result, that comes out around 2.7x cheaper than Claude Managed Agents. swapping in an open model made it sharper still. TrueForge with GLM-5.2 scored a little higher than either setup above, and the entire benchmark run cost about $3 at list prices. being open source matters beyond the license here. the model underneath can be swapped without rewriting the agent, and the whole thing can run inside your own environment when the data cannot leave it. all of this comes down to the runtime around the model, the context it carries, the tools it exposes, and how many times it goes back to the model. that is what a production harness actually owns. the full task list, the per-run numbers, and the MIT-licensed code are on GitHub: (don't forget to star 🌟) you can read more about the same in the article quoted below. thanks to the TrueForge team for working with me on this one.
0:39

Sam Altman made the case for open-source harnesses in July. a month later, someone shipped it, and it's more efficient than most managed harnesses. here is the problem it was aimed at: a large share of your agent's token bill is the model rereading things it already read. that isn't the model's doing. the runtime around it decides what goes into every prompt and how often the model gets called. for example, an agent queries a CRM at step four and gets back 400 rows. those rows get piled up in the conversation history. by step nineteen, the model has to read those rows fifteen times unnecessarily, and every token read is billed at input rates. it happened because your harness assembled that prompt on every turn and kept the rows in it. that gives you two levers: how much context the harness carries forward, and how often it calls the model. there are four practical ways to keep the prompt from growing unnecessarily: → load tool schemas on demand. a server with 100 tools doesn't need to put all 100 into every prompt when the agent only calls two. → offload large results to disk. turn a large response into a short preview and a file path instead of replaying the entire result on every turn. → delegate to subagents. let a subagent spend thirty tool calls in its own context and return one summary to the root agent. → run toolchains in code. one script calls three tools, joins the results, and returns a table instead of three turns each dragging a full response. but reducing context is only half the job. you also need to control how often the model gets called. a good harness should avoid unnecessary planning, verification, and reflection when the work can be completed in fewer steps. TrueFoundry's open-source agent harness, TrueForge, is built around both of those controls. it sits between the model and the tools, deciding what goes into every prompt and when another model call is actually needed. it also breaks token usage down across the harness, skills, instructions, tools, and messages. DevRev's Enterprise-Bench is where this gets tested, on multi-step tasks of the kind where an agent pulls records from one system and reconciles them against another. TrueFoundry ran TrueForge there against Claude Managed Agents, both on the same model, and both finished the same number of tasks. the tie is the part that matters, because it means the gap underneath is not a quality tradeoff. TrueForge reached that score on close to a third of the tokens, with roughly 40% fewer trips back to the model. for the same result, that comes out around 2.7x cheaper than Claude Managed Agents. swapping in an open model made it sharper still. TrueForge with GLM-5.2 scored a little higher than either setup above, and the entire benchmark run cost about $3 at list prices. being open source matters beyond the license here. the model underneath can be swapped without rewriting the agent, and the whole thing can run inside your own environment when the data cannot leave it. all of this comes down to the runtime around the model, the context it carries, the tools it exposes, and how many times it goes back to the model. that is what a production harness actually owns. the full task list, the per-run numbers, and the MIT-licensed code are on GitHub: (don't forget to star 🌟) you can read more about the same in the article quoted below. thanks to the TrueForge team for working with me on this one.

Akshay 🚀

76,552 views • 22 days ago

MICROSOFT JUST OPEN SOURCED THE ENTIRE AGENT RUNTIME, SO YOU NEVER HAVE TO BUILD ONE AGAIN a raw model only writes text. to make it a real agent it needs a loop, tools, memory, planning, approvals, and a way to know when it is done. Microsoft's Agent Harness is that whole layer, and it ships with everything on by default. you bring the model and the tools, it wires up the rest: > an automatic tool calling loop with iteration limits > history saved after every call, so a crash resumes instead of starting over > context compaction that summarizes when the window fills > a persistent todo list plus plan and execute modes > file memory that survives across turns > tool approval with standing rules and auto approval > OpenTelemetry tracing and web search built in > Agent Skills that load domain expertise on demand the mental model is simple: the model is the brain, the harness is the body around it. and it works with whatever you already run: > Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, and GitHub Copilot, and it hosts on Microsoft Foundry you spin one up in a single line: agent = create_harness_agent(client, name, instructions) open source, Python, .NET, and Go, stable since mid 2026. bookmark this. Microsoft already built the hard part of every AI agent, you just plug in the model.
0:23

MICROSOFT JUST OPEN SOURCED THE ENTIRE AGENT RUNTIME, SO YOU NEVER HAVE TO BUILD ONE AGAIN a raw model only writes text. to make it a real agent it needs a loop, tools, memory, planning, approvals, and a way to know when it is done. Microsoft's Agent Harness is that whole layer, and it ships with everything on by default. you bring the model and the tools, it wires up the rest: > an automatic tool calling loop with iteration limits > history saved after every call, so a crash resumes instead of starting over > context compaction that summarizes when the window fills > a persistent todo list plus plan and execute modes > file memory that survives across turns > tool approval with standing rules and auto approval > OpenTelemetry tracing and web search built in > Agent Skills that load domain expertise on demand the mental model is simple: the model is the brain, the harness is the body around it. and it works with whatever you already run: > Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, and GitHub Copilot, and it hosts on Microsoft Foundry you spin one up in a single line: agent = create_harness_agent(client, name, instructions) open source, Python, .NET, and Go, stable since mid 2026. bookmark this. Microsoft already built the hard part of every AI agent, you just plug in the model.

NO1ennn

68,679 views • 23 days ago

Grok Bot + Kimi K3 can be turned into something bigger than an agent: an AI operating system the formula: AI OS = Router + Reasoning + Memory + Tools + Loops + Verification not one giant assistant. six layers that keep work moving without you step 1 -> Grok Bot becomes the operator. you give it the goal, it breaks the goal into jobs, assigns priorities and decides what part of the system should act next. step 2 -> Kimi K3 becomes the reasoning core. hard research, synthesis, long context and planning move here instead of forcing every task through the same model. step 3 -> externalize memory. store goals, decisions, failed attempts, artifacts and current state outside the chat. close the session, come back tomorrow, and the system still knows where it is. step 4 -> connect tools: search, code, files, APIs, docs and data. reasoning decides what should happen. tools actually make it happen. step 5 -> add the loop engine: plan -> execute -> inspect -> update memory -> retry. the loop can wait for new information, rerun a failed task, hand work to another agent or stop when the goal is complete. step 6 -> verify before output. tests, source checks, constraints and explicit completion rules decide whether the system ships the result or sends it back into the loop. that's the difference between an AI assistant and an AI operating system. an assistant waits for your next message. an operating system carries state, routes work and keeps moving. Grok Bot handles orchestration, Kimi K3 handles deeper reasoning, memory keeps the state alive, tools execute, the loop keeps the system running, verification decides when it is actually done. build one reliable loop and you have an agent. connect reasoning, memory, tools and multiple loops around it and you start building infrastructure. the full Grok Bot + Kimi K3 AI OS breakdown is below ↓
0:20

Grok Bot + Kimi K3 can be turned into something bigger than an agent: an AI operating system the formula: AI OS = Router + Reasoning + Memory + Tools + Loops + Verification not one giant assistant. six layers that keep work moving without you step 1 -> Grok Bot becomes the operator. you give it the goal, it breaks the goal into jobs, assigns priorities and decides what part of the system should act next. step 2 -> Kimi K3 becomes the reasoning core. hard research, synthesis, long context and planning move here instead of forcing every task through the same model. step 3 -> externalize memory. store goals, decisions, failed attempts, artifacts and current state outside the chat. close the session, come back tomorrow, and the system still knows where it is. step 4 -> connect tools: search, code, files, APIs, docs and data. reasoning decides what should happen. tools actually make it happen. step 5 -> add the loop engine: plan -> execute -> inspect -> update memory -> retry. the loop can wait for new information, rerun a failed task, hand work to another agent or stop when the goal is complete. step 6 -> verify before output. tests, source checks, constraints and explicit completion rules decide whether the system ships the result or sends it back into the loop. that's the difference between an AI assistant and an AI operating system. an assistant waits for your next message. an operating system carries state, routes work and keeps moving. Grok Bot handles orchestration, Kimi K3 handles deeper reasoning, memory keeps the state alive, tools execute, the loop keeps the system running, verification decides when it is actually done. build one reliable loop and you have an agent. connect reasoning, memory, tools and multiple loops around it and you start building infrastructure. the full Grok Bot + Kimi K3 AI OS breakdown is below ↓

Alex

12,720 views • 1 day ago

Boris Cherny runs Claude Code at Anthropic. His line should stop you mid-scroll: "I don't prompt Claude anymore. I have loops running that prompt Claude and figure out what to do. My job is to write loops." The skill moved. From writing prompts to building the loop around them. A loop that works has three things. Drop one and it burns money in circles. 1. A finish line it can prove. Tests pass or they fail. "Looks done" is not a finish line. 2. A checker that did not write the code. A model grading itself always says yes. 3. Brakes set before you start. A step limit. A money ceiling. A stop condition. That is the whole game. The loop does the work. You design the cage it runs in. Full breakdown below.
0:37

Boris Cherny runs Claude Code at Anthropic. His line should stop you mid-scroll: "I don't prompt Claude anymore. I have loops running that prompt Claude and figure out what to do. My job is to write loops." The skill moved. From writing prompts to building the loop around them. A loop that works has three things. Drop one and it burns money in circles. 1. A finish line it can prove. Tests pass or they fail. "Looks done" is not a finish line. 2. A checker that did not write the code. A model grading itself always says yes. 3. Brakes set before you start. A step limit. A money ceiling. A stop condition. That is the whole game. The loop does the work. You design the cage it runs in. Full breakdown below.

shmidt

16,085 views • 2 months ago

An agent is three things: a harness, a model, and context. If you're serious about owning your intelligence, you probably want to own all three. LangChain founder Harrison Chase joined us at our Sequoia Capital Own Your Intelligence to talk about the piece that often gets the least attention: the harness. He offers a clear heuristic for when to build your own. The more out of distribution you are from what the models were trained on, the more you'll want to customize. And good technical content on how to actually measure performance with evals and langsmith. 00:00 Introduction 00:58 The three parts of an agent: harness, model, context 02:12 What a harness actually does 03:25 Customizing the core loop with middleware 04:41 Sandboxes, file systems, sub-agents, summarization 05:47 Cognitive architectures — and when you still need them 07:03 Build your own harness or use off the shelf? 08:24 In-distribution vs. out-of-distribution: the file-editing example 09:39 Why evals define what "good" means in an organization 11:04 Harbor: what an eval task actually looks like 12:11 Comparing harnesses and models on accuracy, latency, and cost 13:20 Why observability is underrated — it's usually the context 14:34 The data flywheel: traces → curation → experiments 15:42 Getting feedback through UX design and online evaluators 16:51 Demo: LangSmith Engine 19:23 Q&A: Running Engine on Engine, and "codex-ification" 20:44 Q&A: Will harnesses converge or diverge?
23:56

An agent is three things: a harness, a model, and context. If you're serious about owning your intelligence, you probably want to own all three. LangChain founder Harrison Chase joined us at our Sequoia Capital Own Your Intelligence to talk about the piece that often gets the least attention: the harness. He offers a clear heuristic for when to build your own. The more out of distribution you are from what the models were trained on, the more you'll want to customize. And good technical content on how to actually measure performance with evals and langsmith. 00:00 Introduction 00:58 The three parts of an agent: harness, model, context 02:12 What a harness actually does 03:25 Customizing the core loop with middleware 04:41 Sandboxes, file systems, sub-agents, summarization 05:47 Cognitive architectures — and when you still need them 07:03 Build your own harness or use off the shelf? 08:24 In-distribution vs. out-of-distribution: the file-editing example 09:39 Why evals define what "good" means in an organization 11:04 Harbor: what an eval task actually looks like 12:11 Comparing harnesses and models on accuracy, latency, and cost 13:20 Why observability is underrated — it's usually the context 14:34 The data flywheel: traces → curation → experiments 15:42 Getting feedback through UX design and online evaluators 16:51 Demo: LangSmith Engine 19:23 Q&A: Running Engine on Engine, and "codex-ification" 20:44 Q&A: Will harnesses converge or diverge?

Sonya Huang 🐥

77,519 views • 28 days ago

Google just released a free 2-hour course on full Graph Engineering. How to go from one prompt to 100 agents running inside a single graph: 0% → 17:44 - build your first AI agent 25% → 39:30 - run agents with loop engineering 50% → 1:12:38 - turn agent loops into graphs 75% → 1:34:26 - build agents that regulate themselves 100% → 1:55:05 - orchestrate the entire multi-agent system Most people build one agent and stop there. Google is teaching the entire stack: Prompt → Agents → Loops → Graphs → Multi-Agent Systems Single agents are the old workflow. Self-regulating agent graphs are the next one. This 2-hour course is worth more than most paid agent engineering courses. Bookmark it and watch today Then read the full architecture below ↓
2:04:23

Google just released a free 2-hour course on full Graph Engineering. How to go from one prompt to 100 agents running inside a single graph: 0% → 17:44 - build your first AI agent 25% → 39:30 - run agents with loop engineering 50% → 1:12:38 - turn agent loops into graphs 75% → 1:34:26 - build agents that regulate themselves 100% → 1:55:05 - orchestrate the entire multi-agent system Most people build one agent and stop there. Google is teaching the entire stack: Prompt → Agents → Loops → Graphs → Multi-Agent Systems Single agents are the old workflow. Self-regulating agent graphs are the next one. This 2-hour course is worth more than most paid agent engineering courses. Bookmark it and watch today Then read the full architecture below ↓

Lunar

12,020 views • 8 days ago

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas on the brutal truth about who actually makes money in AI (and why it's not who you think): Aravind argues that the real value in AI comes from orchestration. He points to products like Codex, Claude Code, and Perplexity Computer: "What is that? It's an orchestration system. It takes a model, pairs it with an agent harness." And what is an agent harness? "The simplest way of describing it is like rules for how the agent loop should run. What are all the skills and sub-agents and connectors and tools it accesses? Without the harness, you don't necessarily capture and convert the intrinsic intelligence in the model into valuable output tokens." This leads to a blunt conclusion about who has a real business in AI, and who doesn't: "If you're literally just a reseller of model tokens, you have no business, because the model will get commoditized. So even if you're a model builder, you don't have a business. As an infra layer, you have some business on serving those output tokens. But as an application layer or model builder, you don't really have a business if you're just a reseller of tokens that come directly out of the model." So where does the value accrue? "You have a business if you know how to take the model, ground it in valuable context, orchestrate it with a really good agent harness, connected to the right set of tools and connectors (whether it's personal connectors or business connectors) and provide the experience to people in one single unified system." Aravind Srinivas then explains Perplexity's specific edge: Beyond orchestrating across tools, files, and connectors, they also orchestrate across models. "That is the differentiation that Anthropic and OpenAI cannot claim, because you wouldn't find GPT-5 inside the Claude Code harness. You wouldn't find Claude Opus inside the Codex harness. These are competing with each other. Whereas you would find both these models inside Perplexity Computer." Why does this matter? Because it all comes down to power. In Aravind's framing, the fundamental cost driver in AI is watts (the one input nobody can subsidize except the government). "Whoever provides the most valuable output tokens with the least amount of power expended to produce them generates the greatest value to the end user, has the most pricing power, has the most value. That is the orchestration problem to solve." His conclusion: "The one single most important metric in AI is token value per watt per user."
2:50

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas on the brutal truth about who actually makes money in AI (and why it's not who you think): Aravind argues that the real value in AI comes from orchestration. He points to products like Codex, Claude Code, and Perplexity Computer: "What is that? It's an orchestration system. It takes a model, pairs it with an agent harness." And what is an agent harness? "The simplest way of describing it is like rules for how the agent loop should run. What are all the skills and sub-agents and connectors and tools it accesses? Without the harness, you don't necessarily capture and convert the intrinsic intelligence in the model into valuable output tokens." This leads to a blunt conclusion about who has a real business in AI, and who doesn't: "If you're literally just a reseller of model tokens, you have no business, because the model will get commoditized. So even if you're a model builder, you don't have a business. As an infra layer, you have some business on serving those output tokens. But as an application layer or model builder, you don't really have a business if you're just a reseller of tokens that come directly out of the model." So where does the value accrue? "You have a business if you know how to take the model, ground it in valuable context, orchestrate it with a really good agent harness, connected to the right set of tools and connectors (whether it's personal connectors or business connectors) and provide the experience to people in one single unified system." Aravind Srinivas then explains Perplexity's specific edge: Beyond orchestrating across tools, files, and connectors, they also orchestrate across models. "That is the differentiation that Anthropic and OpenAI cannot claim, because you wouldn't find GPT-5 inside the Claude Code harness. You wouldn't find Claude Opus inside the Codex harness. These are competing with each other. Whereas you would find both these models inside Perplexity Computer." Why does this matter? Because it all comes down to power. In Aravind's framing, the fundamental cost driver in AI is watts (the one input nobody can subsidize except the government). "Whoever provides the most valuable output tokens with the least amount of power expended to produce them generates the greatest value to the end user, has the most pricing power, has the most value. That is the orchestration problem to solve." His conclusion: "The one single most important metric in AI is token value per watt per user."

Big Brain AI

42,319 views • 1 month ago