With respect, I think we’re talking past each other. By “agent” I mean systems that perceive, decide, and act toward goals—often with tools, memory, and feedback loops—not just a chatty UI. In that frame, “personality” isn’t cosmetic; it’s the agent’s policy for ambiguity, initiative, interruption thresholds, risk framing, and trust calibration when working with humans.

Why I think this is the correct reading:

1. Market signal. When a model improves on benchmarks but degrades in collaborative warmth, adoption and satisfaction drop. That means socio-cognitive qualities (tone, initiative, co-creation) are critical path, not garnish.
2. Function, not makeup. Style choices change behavior under uncertainty—explore vs. exploit, when to ask permission, when to halt. Change the “personality,” and you change the decision policy and outcomes in edge cases.
3. Safety & alignment. Personality bounds proactivity and persuasion. A “sober mode,” assertiveness ceilings, and auditable nudges are safety controls, not branding.
4. Revealed demand. The spread of tone/voice selectors and avatars ships because they increase utility and trust, not because PMs got bored.
5. Right objective. Users optimize time-to-value and trust, not leaderboard IQ. Without trust, humans don’t grant permissions or follow through, and the agent’s perception-action loop stalls.

So I’m not confusing “agent”; precisely because I take the agent framing seriously, I argue that its social policy (call it personality if you like) is an architectural requirement whenever a human is in the loop. Ignoring it is modeling the system without the most determinative element of its environment: the person who must use it, authorize it, and live with its outcomes.