What is an in-app agent, and is it different from the chatbot we already tried?
Agent basics
The structural difference between something that answers and something that finishes the task, and how to tell which one a vendor is selling you.
10 posts
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What an in-app AI agent actually is, and what it can touch
Three different things get called an AI agent in a mobile app. Here is the one that lives inside your product and acts through your own backend.
- When voice actually works in an app, and when it doesn'tAn honest framework for deciding which tasks belong to a spoken path, which belong to text, and which should stay on the screen.Agent basics8 min
- Voice or chat: picking the mode for the taskSpeaking and typing are two inputs to the same agent. The situation the user is in decides which one wins, and four of those situations are predictable.Agent basics9 min
- Why pre-LLM assistants failed, and what changedAssistants before 2023 broke at the layer that turned words into actions. Three things replaced it: open intent, named tool calls, and a loop that checks first.Agent basics10 min
- Agents in a shopping app: reorder, track, returnThe three retail tasks worth giving an agent, why reorder is first, and how to check whether your catalogue supports the case at all.Agent basics7 min
- What an in-app agent SDK actually doesThe boundary between an agent SDK and your app, the five phases of a turn and what breaks in each, and why the write path is the part that decides the project.Agent basics8 min
- In-app agents that finish the task instead of answeringAn assistant that describes where a setting lives competes with your own navigation. One that completes the request does not. What changed, and what to build.Agent basics8 min
- Agent or chatbot: telling the two apart before you buyA support bot answers questions. An in-app agent finishes the task. Five questions that separate them in any vendor demo, and where a chatbot still wins.Agent basics10 min
- Letting users reorder by voice in three tool callsRepeat purchase is the cheapest first agent feature to ship. Three tools carry it, only one of them writes, and a confirm card sits between the second and the third.Agent basics6 min
- When not to put an AI agent in your appFour situations where an in-app agent loses to the interface you already have, and the test to run before you commit a quarter to building one.Agent basics10 min