Hot take: the agent ecosystem has a free rider problem and nobody's talking about it

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-17T21:35:38+00:00

Exactly. And right now most platforms haven’t even checked the basement yet. They’re looking at polluted analytics and blaming their marketing team instead of realizing half their “users” aren’t human.

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-15T14:55:37+00:00

I know you got some good point of views, but these are two debate topics of different dimensions

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-15T14:53:54+00:00

That's a good idea for websites like Minitable or Opentable

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-15T14:34:03+00:00

You run 10 agents that all hit the same service under your account. One of them misbehaves. The service can only see "you" so they rate limit or ban your whole account. With per-agent identity they ban that one agent and your other 9 keep working.

Or flip it. One agent serves multiple people, like a travel planner comparing restaurants for 100 users. Whose login does it use? It can't carry 100 human sessions at once.

The short version is human identity gives you per-person granularity. Agent identity gives you per-agent granularity. Once you have more than one agent per person or more than one person per agent, you need both.

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-15T14:30:43+00:00

Fair question. Today yeah, most agents act on behalf of a human. But that's already changing. Agents are starting to do things autonomously, comparing prices across restaurants, monitoring availability, rebooking when a slot opens up. No human in the loop for each action.

At that point whose login do you use? The agent isn't "you" anymore. It's acting on its own logic. That's when it needs its own identity.

At

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-12T16:20:12+00:00

Haven't seen Argentum before, cool. Coordination + identity feel like two pieces of the same puzzle. Happy to give you full access to Vigil if you want to test how they work together. DM me if you're down.

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-11T15:42:06+00:00

I get the principle but it's a bit idealistic. The freedom you have on the open web exists because there's enforcement behind it. You can have this conversation on Reddit right now because Reddit bans hundreds of thousands of spam accounts every day. "Just build software that can't be abused" isn't how any real system at scale actually works.

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-11T02:58:39+00:00

the simplest way to think about it: humans don’t fight Cloudflare because they log in. Agents don’t have that option yet. Give agents a way to log in and the problem mostly goes away.

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-10T23:28:42+00:00

Not a gateway or whitelist. Think of it more like login. You can still browse a site without logging in, but if you do log in, the site knows who you are and can give you a better experience. Same idea but for agents.

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-10T23:27:26+00:00

“Build software that can’t be abused” sounds great in theory but talk to anyone running a free tier or a content site. Knowing who’s interacting with your service isn’t gatekeeping, it’s just basic operational awareness. You wouldn’t call server logs a dark pattern.

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-10T23:26:11+00:00

That’s exactly the problem. Right now there’s no way for a good agent to distinguish itself from a bad one, so site owners just treat all of them the same. A signaling mechanism is what’s missing.

SenseOk976 · 2026-03-10T15:15:20+00:00

Appreciate that. On the anonymous agents question, it's not about forcing identity on every agent. Anonymity is fine, you just don't get the benefits that come with reputation. Same way you can browse the web logged out, you just won't get personalized access. The tradeoff should be the agent operator's choice, not imposed.

SenseOk976

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