Some Notes from the Intelligence Economy

OpenAI's launch of AgentKit & ChatKit and what it means for AI automation. Analysis of the AI startup landscape and the future of business applications.

AgentKit & ChatKit

OpenAI launched AgentKit & ChatKit to potentially compete with n8n and Zapier. The use cases shown were Figma, Canva, and Zillow—consumer-focused applications with relatively simple flows.

This seems to be a new attempt to build on top of an MCP-like ecosystem. The approach is interesting but raises questions about where AI automation is heading.

Plugin Store Lessons

The plugin store faced challenges with adoption and brittleness of capabilities. Users found that plugins often didn't work reliably, and the complexity of debugging cross-plugin interactions made the experience frustrating.

Market Landscape

Analysis shows allocation to different categories is balanced with public companies or unicorns at 34.8% and AI startups at 32.3%, with major tech companies like NVIDIA, Adobe, Oracle, Shopify, Netflix, and Target well-represented.

What's Next

I think this will be more useful for B2C applications with simpler flows. I can't imagine someone chatting their way through designing a poster on Canva—the interface friction exceeds the cognitive load reduction.

For B2B workflows, the complexity demands more sophisticated orchestration than chat-based interaction can provide. The real opportunity is in specialized agents that understand domain context deeply.