In addition to the managed interface for agent configuration and so on, is the novelty that all the agents run on Anthropic's infra? Sort of like Claude Code on the Web? If so, interesting that they move up the stack, from just a provider of an intelligence API to more complex deployed products.
I’ve been building my own version of this. It’s a bit shocking to see parallel ideation.
FWIW- IMO, being locked into a single model provider is a deal breaker.
This solution will distract a lot of folks and doom-lock them into Anthropic. That’ll probably be fine for small offices, but it is suicidal to get hooked into Anthropic’s way of doing things for anything complex. IME, you want to be able to compare different models and you end up managing them to your style. It’s a bit like cooking- where you may have greater affinity for certain flavors. You make selection tradeoffs on when to use a frontier model on design & planning vs something self hosted for simpler operations tasks.
> With Managed Agents, you define outcomes and success criteria, and Claude self-evaluates and iterates until it gets there (available in research preview, request access here). It also supports traditional prompt-and-response workflows when you want tighter control.
Call me stupid, but this sounds not like they want software developers to be around in a year or two.
I wonder how long until Claude/OpenAI eat a lot of the current AI/Agent SaaS's lunch.
Originally I thought they would stick towards being a model provider mainly, but with all the recent releases it seems they do want to provide more "services."
Wonder what part of the market 3rd party apps will build a moat around?
Interesting, so you're saying Anthropic/Openai/etc will get a general solution that won't be hands off. The moat for other companies will be creating the specific, managed solution.
I can see that, assuming models don't make some giant leap forward.
I saw this coming. Anthropic wants to shift developers on to their platform where they’re in control. The fight for harness control has been terribly inconvenient for them.
To score a big IPO they need to be a platform, not just a token pipeline. Everything they’re doing signals they’re moving in this direction.
They keep calling this the first solution of this kind...obviously Anthropic is a much larger company, but https://smith.langchain.com/ has this...and had for a while, or am I missing something?
Those agents did such a wonderful job making and deploying this page that the testimonials are unreadable because each spot has two of them overlapping.
As someone who spins up docker containers where I use the Anthropic Agentic SDK to build Jekyll websites for customers, I don’t see much of an appeal. I didn’t find it that difficult to set up the infrastructure, the hard part was getting the agents to do exactly what I wanted. Besides, eventually I might want to transition away to another provider (or even self hosting) so I’d prefer having that freedom.
I own a stake in a small brewery in Canada, and this feature just saved me setting up some infrastructure to "productionize" an agent we created to assist with ordering, invoicing, and government document creation.
I get paid in beer and vibes for projects like these, so the more I can ship these projects in the same place I prototype them the better.
(Also don't worry all, still have SF income to buy food for my family with)
This is going to grow into a sophisticated platform, and is what will eventually compete head on with saas. I dont think companies will build their own agents, aside from looping in tools. As the models improve, there will be less hand holding. This could end up competing with AWS/GCP
Anthropic is very far ahead on agentic engineering. There is more to getting it to work than it looks, and their models might be directly trained to know how to use the claude code harness.
But beyond that, AWS is a very complex platform. Agents simplify saas, the agent itself manages the api calls, maybe the database queries, more of the logic. As software moves into the agent, you need less cloud capability, and a better agent harness/hosting. Essentially, this makes the AWS platform obsolete, most services make much less sense.
In addition to the managed interface for agent configuration and so on, is the novelty that all the agents run on Anthropic's infra? Sort of like Claude Code on the Web? If so, interesting that they move up the stack, from just a provider of an intelligence API to more complex deployed products.
I’ve been building my own version of this. It’s a bit shocking to see parallel ideation.
FWIW- IMO, being locked into a single model provider is a deal breaker.
This solution will distract a lot of folks and doom-lock them into Anthropic. That’ll probably be fine for small offices, but it is suicidal to get hooked into Anthropic’s way of doing things for anything complex. IME, you want to be able to compare different models and you end up managing them to your style. It’s a bit like cooking- where you may have greater affinity for certain flavors. You make selection tradeoffs on when to use a frontier model on design & planning vs something self hosted for simpler operations tasks.
FWIW everyone is also building a version of this themselves. Only so many directions to go
> With Managed Agents, you define outcomes and success criteria, and Claude self-evaluates and iterates until it gets there (available in research preview, request access here). It also supports traditional prompt-and-response workflows when you want tighter control.
Call me stupid, but this sounds not like they want software developers to be around in a year or two.
I wonder how long until Claude/OpenAI eat a lot of the current AI/Agent SaaS's lunch.
Originally I thought they would stick towards being a model provider mainly, but with all the recent releases it seems they do want to provide more "services."
Wonder what part of the market 3rd party apps will build a moat around?
Probably never. There are a couple reasons:
1. We pay for saas, so we don't have to manage it. If you vibe-code or use these AI things, then you are managing it yourself.
2. Most Saas is like $20-$100/month/person for most Saas. For a software engineer, that maybe <1h of pay.
3. Most Saas require some sort of human in the loop to check for quality (at least sampling). No users would want to do that.
Number 2 is the biggest reason. It's $20 a month.... I'm not gonna replace that with anything.
Writing this message already costs more than $20 of my time.
I predict that the market will get bigger because people are more prone to automate the long-tail/last-mile stuff since they are able to
Interesting, so you're saying Anthropic/Openai/etc will get a general solution that won't be hands off. The moat for other companies will be creating the specific, managed solution.
I can see that, assuming models don't make some giant leap forward.
I saw this coming. Anthropic wants to shift developers on to their platform where they’re in control. The fight for harness control has been terribly inconvenient for them.
To score a big IPO they need to be a platform, not just a token pipeline. Everything they’re doing signals they’re moving in this direction.
The next $100B buisness model in 2026 is AaaS (Agent as a Service).
This was inevitable, I called this a few weeks ago [1]. It’s an easy way to increase revenue without making the models smarter, and lock you in harder
https://danthegoodman.substack.com/p/where-agents-converge
They keep calling this the first solution of this kind...obviously Anthropic is a much larger company, but https://smith.langchain.com/ has this...and had for a while, or am I missing something?
Those agents did such a wonderful job making and deploying this page that the testimonials are unreadable because each spot has two of them overlapping.
As someone who spins up docker containers where I use the Anthropic Agentic SDK to build Jekyll websites for customers, I don’t see much of an appeal. I didn’t find it that difficult to set up the infrastructure, the hard part was getting the agents to do exactly what I wanted. Besides, eventually I might want to transition away to another provider (or even self hosting) so I’d prefer having that freedom.
Happy to see this launched, particularly today.
I own a stake in a small brewery in Canada, and this feature just saved me setting up some infrastructure to "productionize" an agent we created to assist with ordering, invoicing, and government document creation.
I get paid in beer and vibes for projects like these, so the more I can ship these projects in the same place I prototype them the better.
(Also don't worry all, still have SF income to buy food for my family with)
i get paid in vibes and chilling as well for some similar agent stuff i do for content creators.
quick question, how do you manage these side projects that kinda need to be production ready but aren't you are actual SF job lol?
some of these people think they are my actual customer/client but like i do it for fun and to help them out.
As a video content creator, I'm curious if you would mind sharing the agentic stuff you're doing for others?
This is going to grow into a sophisticated platform, and is what will eventually compete head on with saas. I dont think companies will build their own agents, aside from looping in tools. As the models improve, there will be less hand holding. This could end up competing with AWS/GCP
Exactly my thoughts, AWS is due for a large rewrite/ground up rewrite from first principles to be able to fully utilize LLMs/agentic capabilities.
What exactly makes you think that AWS & co. don't have already two competing Agents-as-a-Service Platforms at any time?
Anthropic is very far ahead on agentic engineering. There is more to getting it to work than it looks, and their models might be directly trained to know how to use the claude code harness.
But beyond that, AWS is a very complex platform. Agents simplify saas, the agent itself manages the api calls, maybe the database queries, more of the logic. As software moves into the agent, you need less cloud capability, and a better agent harness/hosting. Essentially, this makes the AWS platform obsolete, most services make much less sense.
And now OpenClaw is dead because serious people have a less janky option!
[dead]
MANAGED AGENTS sounds like progress, but also like we’re standardizing around the current limitations instead of solving them.