The End of the Agency Gold Rush: The Rise of Pragmatism and the Moment of Truth in the Market

CN
5 hours ago

Capital tightening, the rise of aggregation technology, the differentiation of practical and personalized agents, and the future trend of personalization and embedding

Author: tong

Translation: Baihua Blockchain

The gold rush of agents is reaching its moment of truth. With capital tightening and reduced attention, the market is enforcing a simple rule: agents must be practical, not just potentially existing. Every agent now faces two fundamental tests:

“Will I use this?”

“Are ordinary people (not just tech enthusiasts) really using this?” This trough period is natural selection, eliminating products that cannot solve real problems. The survivors will not be the most technically impressive, but those that truly integrate into users' lives.

 

 01
The Inevitability of Aggregation

The arrival of OpenAI's agent API and Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) marks a powerful shift towards integration. The era of decentralized tools is coming to an end. These two technologies share the same core vision: aggregate everything.

1. Unified Data Access: MCP eliminates the need to integrate with each data source separately. One protocol can connect any AI to any information, whether it's your documents, databases, or real-time data streams.

2. Centralized Capabilities: The agent API consolidates functionalities that previously required multiple components—reasoning, tool usage, web access, document search—into a single endpoint, automatically handling complex tasks. This is not just a technological evolution, but the collapse of human barriers. The complex agent ecosystem is being simplified into an aggregation layer, bringing everything together in one place, one interface.

 

 02 Market Paradox

The "agent market" has never made sense for practical agents. The failure of the GPT store was not coincidental, but inevitable. No one wants to constantly switch between different agents when specific practical functions are needed. However, Character.AI has thrived with almost the same market model. The difference lies in the purpose. When personality becomes the product rather than just the packaging, the market suddenly makes sense. People access Character.AI not for practicality, but for connection, for the agent itself. The destination and the tool merge into one. This reveals the fundamental differentiation of the agent economy:

Practical agents must integrate into "back-end" workflows

Personality agents must stand out as "front-end" destinations

Personalization: A Sustainable Moat

As agent capabilities become infrastructure, what is defensible? Not technology, but connection:

  1. Visual identity that conveys a sense of belonging

  2. Voice patterns that evoke familiarity

  3. Knowledge that reflects your background

  4. Personality that aligns with your preferences Each interaction deepens practicality and connectivity—creating composite value that cannot be replicated through functionality.

 

 03 Embedded Future: The Rise of Agent Products

The collision of standardized infrastructure and personalization is not creating better agents, but agent products. This distinction is crucial. Manus.im is a typical example of this evolution. It does not position itself as an "agent platform," but as a productivity companion seamlessly integrated into existing workflows. The model itself is not remarkable—it quietly enhances human capabilities through tasks like drafting emails, summarizing meetings, and information retrieval. The appeal of Manus lies not in novelty, but in invisibility—it eliminates the boundary between tools and assistants. It embodies the core principle of practical agents succeeding by integrating into workflows. By focusing on user productivity rather than technological showmanship, Manus captures the essence of the post-hype phase: the genuine practicality that brings users back every day. This is the embedded future: agents are no longer independent entities, but seamlessly integrated into the product DNA:

Invisible Infrastructure: Technology integrated into familiar workflows

Contextual Intelligence: Systems that understand your unique situation

Relationship-Centric Design: Interfaces that learn and adapt to your preferences Independent agents will become relics of early experimentation—just as navigation became a feature of smartphones before independent GPS devices. The winners will create agent products that completely dissolve the boundary between tools and assistants.

 

 04 Holoworld's Strategic Vision

While others pursue text interfaces, Holoworld recognizes a fundamental truth: humans connect through visual storytelling. Two insights distinguish our approach:

Production over Generation: We do not seek one-off novelty, but build a complete pipeline to produce distributable, high-quality assets

Relationships over Practicality: Our personalized visual/voice agents create a front end that captures emotional connections while delegating practicality to a modular back end For creators, this democratizes work that once required teams and budgets. For brands, it enables the establishment of genuine connections through digital ambassadors. At Holoworld, we are pioneering the future of these trend integrations. Our Agent Studio creates visual AI companions with unique personalities that can generate broadcast-quality videos from simple prompts while serving as a perfect interface for powerful AI functionalities like web search, data analysis, and task automation. Users are not just getting help—they are building relationships with characters they truly like. This is the direction of the entire market's development: intelligence is reflected in the companions you connect with, not the tools you need to learn.

 

 05 Conclusion

The hype cycle has come to an end. Technological barriers are collapsing. The question is no longer "Can we build this?" but "Will anyone care?" The winners will not launch the most agents, but create experiences so useful that they become invisible—complexity disappears, possibilities remain. The market has spoken. Practicality outweighs possibility.

Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/03/5712.html

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