软件时代的终结,正是驾驭时代的开端。
人工智能凭借其智能性,淘汰了那些工作流固定的 SaaS 托管数据库。AI 就像一匹野马,力量强大但桀骜不驯。要驾驭这股力量,就需要将其驯化。
这种驯化包含七个部分:
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上下文与记忆:通用模型需要定制化的检索。为放射科医生获取正确上下文的系统,与为律师助理获取上下文的系统截然不同。
有时这需要大量的短期记忆:智能体在 45 秒前正在处理什么?其他时候,则可能是大规模图像检索,例如用于放射学或视频生成。还有些时候,它是在数十亿份文档中进行关键词搜索。这些系统将针对每个具体用例进行定制,以实现最佳准确性。
与检索并存的还有上下文数据库,它就像每家企业的实际运营手册。我们每天带在脑中、带到工作中的标准操作流程,就是这些手册。最初捕获这些流程,并随着人员和流程的变化而不断演进,这正是上下文数据库的精髓所在。
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工具与行动:工具是智能体影响外部世界的方式。上下文数据库中的手册描述了要做什么,而工具则是实际执行这些操作所需的原料和器具。
一个现代的驾驭系统通过注册表来暴露工具,验证模型传递的参数,调度调用,将敏感操作置于审批之后,并将结果解析回智能体的循环中。MCP 已成为连接各环节的纽带。驾驭系统的质量取决于它能安全暴露多少工具,以及处理工具失败时的干净利落程度。
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编排与循环:智能体的循环是思考、行动、观察、重复。规划、分解、子智能体、重试和停止条件,共同定义了工作如何完成。
我们还期望软件能随着我们的使用而不断改进。能够从每次运行中学习的闭环模式,将成为区分不同供应商的关键。
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状态与持久化:在一个由众多不同人员共同开发的大型企业系统中,系统必须具备弹性。当某个执行框架在一个10步任务的第7步崩溃时,它应该能从第8步恢复,而不是从头开始。文件系统、检查点、会话线程和工件存储是防止工作丢失的机制。
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沙箱与计算:每个智能体都需要一个可供其运行的沙箱。隔离的Unix工作空间、受控的网络出口以及存在于模型之外的凭证,是确保沙箱在规模化运行时安全、保密且高效的关键。
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可观测性与治理:你无法信任你看不见的东西。追踪每一步、记录每一次工具调用、将评估作为回归测试运行,并在最高风险的决策中引入人工审核,这些是将演示系统转变为生产系统的关键。护栏强制执行策略。评估在客户发现之前捕捉回归问题。
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成本与工作流优化:第七项原则是架构判断。哪些应该是确定性的,哪些应该是非确定性的?对于每一步,哪个模型是合适的——是最先进的、中型的、小型的,还是经过微调的?哪些知识应该归属于技能,哪些又应该归属于记忆?
其结果是在软件领域形成了一种新的竞争态势。
这并非在所有类别中都适用。那些主要实验室优先关注的市场,将因其快速行动的能力以及对模型的直接控制而受益。但这同时也为初创公司留下了数千个独立的市场机会。
当每家公司都能使用相同的模型时,会发生什么?最优秀的驾驭者将胜出。
The end of the software era is the beginning of the harness era.
AI outmoded SaaS managed databases with fixed workflows with intelligence. Like a mustang, AI is powerful but wild. Harnessing the power means domestication.
There are seven parts to this domestication :
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Context & memory : General models need bespoke retrieval. The system that fetches the right context for a radiologist is not the system that fetches it for a paralegal.
Sometimes it’s a lot of short-term memory. What was the agent working on 45 seconds ago? Other times it’s large-scale image retrieval, say for radiology or for video generation. Other times it’s a keyword search across a billion documents. Those systems will be bespoke to each individual use case to drive the best accuracy.
Sitting alongside retrieval is the context database, the recipe book of how each business actually runs. The standard operating procedures we all carry in our heads & bring to work every day are those recipes. Capturing them initially & evolving them as both people & process change is the essence of the context database.
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Tools & action : Tools are how the agent affects the outside world. The recipes in the context database describe what to do. Tools are the ingredients & utensils that actually do it.
A modern harness exposes tools through a registry, validates the arguments the model passes, dispatches the call, gates sensitive actions behind approvals, & parses the result back into the agent’s loop. MCP has emerged as the connective tissue. The quality of a harness depends on how many tools it can safely expose & how cleanly it handles their failures.
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Orchestration & loop : The agentic loop is think, act, observe, repeat. Planning, decomposition, sub-agents, retries, & stop conditions define how the work gets done.
We also expect our software to improve as we use it. Closed loop patterns that learn from each run will separate different vendors.
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State & persistence : In a large-scale enterprise with lots of different people working on a system, the system needs to be resilient. When a harness crashes at step 7 of a 10 step task, it should resume at step 8, not restart from zero. File systems, checkpoints, session threads, & artifact storage are the mechanisms that prevent lost work.
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Sandbox & compute : Each agent needs a sandbox in which to play. Isolated Unix workspaces, controlled network egress, & credentials that live outside the model are what make sandboxes secure, confidential, & fast at scale.
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Observability & governance : You cannot trust what you cannot see. Tracing every step, logging every tool call, running evals as regression tests, & putting humans in the loop for the highest stakes decisions are how a demo becomes a production system. Guardrails enforce policy. Evals catch regressions before customers do.
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Cost & workflow optimization : The seventh discipline is architectural judgment. What should be deterministic versus non-deterministic? Which model is the right one for each step, state of the art, medium, small, or fine-tuned? What knowledge belongs in skills versus in memory?
The result is a new competitive dynamic in software.
This won’t work in every category. The markets the major labs prioritize will benefit from their ability to move quickly & their direct control of the models. But that leaves thousands of separate markets up for startups.
What happens when every company has access to the same model? The best riders win.