Layer 1: Agents — The Agentic Economy

Layer 1: Agents is the topmost layer of the Agentic Economy — the user-facing AI systems that autonomously perform tasks, make decisions, and interact with the world on behalf of humans. These are the products and services that most people think of when they hear "AI agent."

What Makes an Agent

Unlike traditional software that follows rigid scripts, agents exercise judgment. They interpret ambiguous instructions, break complex goals into subtasks, use tools and APIs, and adapt when things don't go as planned. The best agents combine large language model reasoning with persistent memory, tool use, and the ability to take real-world actions — from writing code to booking travel to diagnosing patients.

The Landscape

Layer 1 spans a spectrum from general-purpose assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok) to domain-specific vertical agents. Harvey handles legal research and document drafting. Abridge documents medical conversations autonomously. Devin writes and deploys software as a fully autonomous engineer. Palantir deploys AI agents for defense and intelligence analysis.

Enterprise agents like Agentforce, Copilot, and Glean embed agentic capabilities into existing business workflows — CRM, productivity suites, and enterprise search.

Depends On

Layer 1 agents are built with and coordinated by Layer 2 (Creation & Orchestration) tools — frameworks like LangChain, CrewAI, and protocols like MCP and A2A. They are powered by Layer 4 (Foundation Models) intelligence — the reasoning, language, and multimodal capabilities of models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and others.