Ask HN: Are there any real examples of AI agents doing work?

On the one hand you have gurus claiming that AI agents are going to all make all SaaS redundant, on the other claiming that AI isn't going to take my coding job, but I need to adapt my workflows to incorporate AI. We all need to start preparing now for the changes that AI is going to cause.

But these two claims aren't compatible. If AGI and these super agents are that bonkers amazeballs that they can replace entire SaaS companies - then there is no way I'm going to be able to adapt my workflows to compete as a programmer.

Further, if the wildest claims about AI end up proving to be true - there is simply no way to prepare. What possible adaptation to my workflow could I possibly come up with that an AI agent could not surpass? Why should I bother learning how to implement (with today's apis) some RAG setup for a SaaS customer service chatbot when presumably an AI agent is going to make that skillset redundant shortly after?

I'm going to be interviewing for frontend roles soon, and for my prep I'm just going back to basics and making sure I remember on demand all the basics css, html, js/ts - fuck the rest of this noise.

Yes, we have and more!

We sell maker and STEM education electronics, but the profit margins on products like Raspberry Pis, Micro:bits, and Arduinos are, well, pretty slim. This has pushed us to become extremely efficient; so much so that we ended up creating our own AI-agent-based ERP platform called Koi [1]

In essence, our work is built on the shoulders of giants like OpenAI’s Assistant API, Anthropic and Rails.

One of our standout demos is that certain objects (Orders, Quotes, Supplier Orders, Customers etc) in our database are assigned their own email addresses (using Rails' Action Mailbox[2]). Emails can be forwarded directly to these objects-whether it’s an order, a customer, or a supplier order.

From there, our agent, “Koi,” automatically extracts relevant information from emails and takes appropriate actions. For example, Koi can create a quote, attach a purchase order PDF to an order, or extract tracking information from supplier shipping confirmation emails to provide live tracking updates.

It also works the other way around; you can ask Koi to send a customer their tax invoice or inform them that a product they were interested in is out of stock, seamlessly handling typical customer service tasks.

Previously, we integrated speech-to-text functionality using the Whisper API, which made for an impressive demo.

Now, we’re taking it a step further by rebuilding our speech system to leverage OpenAI’s new WebRTC-based Real-time API. The key advantage here is that it comes with function calling support[3]. We already support a variety of automation features using barcodes[4], allowing users to scan a barcode and have Koi perform specific actions. This has proven to be an ideal area in the application to integrate tool use with the real-time API, creating even more powerful and efficient workflows.

Our ultimate goal is to integrate this system with Bishop, our product-picking robot[5].

[1] https://www.koi.app

[2] https://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_mailbox_basics.html

[3] https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/realtime-model-capab...

[4] https://help.koi.app/article/54-barcode-driven-fulfillment

[5] https://piaustralia.com.au/pages/the-raspberry-pi-that-ships...

- ICP / Sales Agent: I hired an offshore resource and built a GPT that they can send titles and other identifiers to, and it would say if it was in our ICP or not. I created it for a specific process that has outlined steps and FAQ from that person on things they have encountered, I plan on adding more questions and answers. This was super helpful on saving time on answering questions about titles / improving the results of their work.

- Domain Policy Scan (SPF, DKIM, DMARC): I scan domains and find SPF records and then use an Agent and a prompt to break out all the system tokens from the SPF to understand the systems companies are using. The prompt is a consent work in progress, but I have it done to be really consistent

Both have been really helpful to my overall workflow.