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The Age of Agent Experience

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Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#11

Post by danielbln »

jelambs wrote: post #8
abhshkdz wrote: post #3

Good read, thanks for sharing! I'd love for OAuth to be augmented with agent-friendly scopes. Completely agree that it's a standard that doesn't need to be reinvented. But in how things are today, there's two broad areas where OAuth doesn't quite cut it: 1) long tail of websites that don't have APIs, so the only way for an agent to interact with them on the user's behalf is to log in more conventionally, and 2) even…

author of the post here, yeah this is a really good point. I think we're going to see more people investing in building OAuth compatible apps and more thorough APIs to support agent use cases. but of course, not every site is going to do so, so agents will in many cases just be doing screenscraping effectively. but I think overtime, users will prefer using applications that make it easier and more secure for agents t…

Interesting, what's are the heuristics for blocking? User agent? Something playwright does, metadata like resolution or actual behavior?

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#13

Post by semi-extrinsic »

svilen_dobrev wrote: post #6

hm. API stands for Application Programming Interface. Which IMO is not same as Application Agentic Interface.. similar to how it is not Application's Human Interface. Maybe closer than that. But, parsing documentation? And, believing it blindly? hah. Maybe ressurect Semantic web as well..

> Maybe ressurect Semantic web as well

This gave me a chuckle. I believe the current hype term along this line is "ontologies".

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#14

Post by sethhochberg »

danielbln wrote: post #11
jelambs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

author of the post here, yeah this is a really good point. I think we're going to see more people investing in building OAuth compatible apps and more thorough APIs to support agent use cases. but of course, not every site is going to do so, so agents will in many cases just be doing screenscraping effectively. but I think overtime, users will prefer using applications that make it easier and more secure for agents t…

Interesting, what's are the heuristics for blocking? User agent? Something playwright does, metadata like resolution or actual behavior?

The user agent is pretty low hanging fruit, but these days even your most standard captchas / bot detection algorithms are looking at things like mouse movement patterns - a simple bot controlling a mouse might be coded to move the cursor from wherever it is to the destination in the shortest path possible; a human might try for the shortest path, but actually do something that only approximates the most direct path based on their dexterity, where the cursor began, the mouse they’re using, etc.

Tools in this space rely a lot on human use of a computer being much slower, less precise, and more variable than machine use of a computer.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#15

Post by bboygravity »

jelambs wrote: post #8
abhshkdz wrote: post #3

Good read, thanks for sharing! I'd love for OAuth to be augmented with agent-friendly scopes. Completely agree that it's a standard that doesn't need to be reinvented. But in how things are today, there's two broad areas where OAuth doesn't quite cut it: 1) long tail of websites that don't have APIs, so the only way for an agent to interact with them on the user's behalf is to log in more conventionally, and 2) even…

author of the post here, yeah this is a really good point. I think we're going to see more people investing in building OAuth compatible apps and more thorough APIs to support agent use cases. but of course, not every site is going to do so, so agents will in many cases just be doing screenscraping effectively. but I think overtime, users will prefer using applications that make it easier and more secure for agents t…

If website haven't been able to make even consistent logins and forms for humans to use, what makes you think they will be able to make usable API's for agents to use?

I've tried making a Firefox extension that fills webforms using an LLM and the things website makers come up with the break their own forms for both humans and agents are just insane.

There are probably over a 1000 different ways to ask for someone's address that an agent (and/or human) would struggle to understand. Just to name an example.

I think agents will be able to get through them easily, but NOT because the websites makers are going to do a better job at being easier to use.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#16

Post by javasquip »

xnx wrote: post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

I think the underlying assumption in this is an important question to consider. Should we treat agents as we would have treated bots over the decades. I do believe that treating agents like traditional bots of old misses an important aspect. Traditional bots are doing something with the intent to serve some external entities gain (scraping content, attacks, etc.). Agents, while leveraging similar systems, are serving a site's end consumer. When I use an agent to shop, I'm still the customer of the shop. As the shop owner, I want to give the best experience therefore it's in my best interest to provide an AX that supports them providing a good experience to the end user. Because my target customer is now using an agent to help make a purchase, if I shut my door to their delegated system, I'm telling them to shop somewhere else that does support this.

We are early enough in this evolution to help direct the ship in a way that serves the end user, web owners/creators, and the agent.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#17

Post by wslh »

xnx wrote: post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

I cannot see the difference in the access mechanism between an agent and what we use today for APIs consumption. The agent, whatever it is, is basically a client, P2P node, etc.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#18

Post by throwup238 »

javasquip wrote: post #16
xnx wrote: post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

I think the underlying assumption in this is an important question to consider. Should we treat agents as we would have treated bots over the decades. I do believe that treating agents like traditional bots of old misses an important aspect. Traditional bots are doing something with the intent to serve some external entities gain (scraping content, attacks, etc.). Agents, while leveraging similar systems, are serving…

I think economic incentives are going to get in the way of that, as is tradition. Amazon’s dev teams in charge of the retail web interface might want to make it easier to sell you more products regardless of interface but there’s always a competing VP with more influence that wants to juice their KPIs by stuffing more advertising down the user’s throat, so they drive top down decisions that impede agents.

It’s almost inevitable since everyone wants more growth and advertising is almost always seen as free money left on the table by decision makers.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#19

Post by mtrovo »

xnx wrote: post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

We might live in a world where veto-ed assistants get VIP access to use the websites impersonating their owners without much second thought as long as you're at least on the paid Flash Max Pro™ plan.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#20

Post by vlan0 »

xnx wrote: post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

Ya, webauthn with hardware requirement would kill it too. Gotta physically touch it. It’ll be gross when someone starts to automate that too.
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