Not Every Agent Should Talk 🤖

The promise of seamless AI assistance is currently delivering more frustration than flow. We need agents that finish the job and know when to be silent.

I’m in a battle with AI agents.

So far, they spin up fast, get you prompting, get you started - then leave the hard part of the task undone.

They don’t follow through. They don’t remember. They promise flow and deliver a thousand half-finished thoughts.

I don’t need an assistant with listening and commitment issues.

What I need—and what we should be designing—are agents that finish the job, stay out of the way, and know when not to speak.

Instead, we’re shipping noise. Premature, over-eager bots that break more than they build. Its a race to get to market, but not a race to get it right. This isn’t the future of productivity. It’s just a new kind of clutter.

🧠 Wait—What Is an AI Agent, Really?

When you hear "AI agent," do you picture a calm, capable assistant like Jarvis from Iron Man? Maybe TARS from Interstellar—charming, tactical, dry-witted?
Or, on the more chilling side, HAL 9000 whispering “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.”

Let’s bring it back to reality.

AI agents today are nowhere near that level of sentience (or danger). At their core, AI agents are software systems that use artificial intelligence to complete tasks on your behalf—autonomously, and often without constant input.

They should:

• Understand goals

• Break them into steps

• Make decisions

• Take action

• Learn from outcomes

Think of them as robotic coworkers. They’re powered by models like GPT-4, stitched together with frameworks like LangChain or OpenAI’s Assistants API, and increasingly built with no-code tools like Zapier and Replit, and more are coming.

The tech is evolving fast.
The design discipline around it? Still catching up.

🤫 Not Every Agent Needs to Be Conversational

We’ve defaulted to chat UIs for everything. But not all AI agents need to talk—and many shouldn’t.

Conversational agents are valuable when users need dynamic interaction. But they’re also complex, expensive to maintain, and often prone to failure—especially when stretched across multi-step workflows.

That’s where non-conversational agents (a.k.a. workflows) come in.

They don’t try to feel human. They just execute: process an invoice, analyze a dataset, trigger a workflow, close the loop.

✨ Conversational vs. Non-Conversational Agents

Conversational Agents
→ Useful when:

• The user needs real-time help or dynamic guidance

• Interaction involves ambiguity or branching logic

• Personalization builds trust (e.g. coaching, support)

Non-Conversational Agents (Workflows)
→ Useful when:

• The task is repeatable, predictable, and goal-driven

• Accuracy and consistency matter more than tone

• You want it to just happen in the background

Examples:

• A chatbot that walks you through filing a bug report? Conversational.

• A background agent that assigns the ticket, tags it, adds it to your tracker? Non-conversational.

• A report generator that runs every Monday and updates your dashboard? Non-conversational.

Trade-off:
Conversational agents offer flexibility and presence.
Workflows offer speed, reliability, and peace of mind.

And in today’s noisy world, peace of mind is a differentiator.

We’re Shipping Noise

The vast majority of agents I encounter today don’t finish the job. They fire off an initial response, suggest a superficial next step, offer a digital start—and then just… vanish or leave you waiting and wanting more. It’s the illusion of helpfulness, and frankly, it’s more irritating than no help at all. Worse, this rush to ship half-baked agents is actively eroding user trust. We’re flooding the digital landscape with brittle, semi-functional interfaces that demand our attention with endless notifications but consistently fail to deliver tangible value. What we’re building isn’t a smooth flow; it’s just friction wrapped in a deceptively clean UI.

The rush to ship agents has outpaced our responsibility to design them well.
We’re flooding the zone with brittle, semi-functional interfaces that demand attention but don’t deliver value.

What we’re building isn’t flow.
It’s friction.

Agent Clutter: The UX Problem No One Wants to Own

Clutter used to be visual. Now it’s behavioral. You don’t see it—you feel it.

• Five overlapping AI widgets offering to rewrite your message

• A “smart assistant” injecting itself into every workspace tab

• Notification threads that multiply with every new suggestion

This is agent clutter: too many agents, too little value, all competing for control.

We’ve taught users to expect simplicity, elegance, clarity. And now? We’re overwhelming them with digital coworkers who interrupt instead of support.

When Should Agents Be Silent?

Here’s a radical thought: not every agent should talk. Some shouldn’t even be visible.

The best agent I’ve used lately didn’t say a word. It observed a pattern, took an action, and logged it silently. No badge. No ping. Just relief.

That’s what good design feels like—absence, not presence.

So ask this before you ship your next AI interface:

• Does this reduce friction—or create more?

• Will the agent actually finish something for the user?

• Are we solving for utility—or just visibility?

If it’s the latter, you’re not building an agent.
You’re building an interruption.

What Helpful Looks Like in the Age of Agents

We don’t need a deluge of more AI agents vying for our attention. We need a deliberate shift towards building thoughtful ones. Not the loudest, not the flashiest, but those that are laser-focused on delivering genuine utility from start to finish. The hallmark of a truly helpful agent isn't its cleverness in conversation or its dazzling array of features; it's its quiet effectiveness in achieving our goals. These are agents designed with purpose, built to reduce friction rather than introduce novelty, and they earn their keep by consistently seeing tasks through. This kind of design isn't a secondary consideration; it's the very essence of responsible product leadership. It requires careful judgment, a keen understanding of user needs, and the courage to prioritize genuine value over superficial features. Let's move beyond the obsession with mere presence and embrace a design philosophy centered on clarity and tangible results. Because the future won't be shaped by the agents that clamor for our attention, but by those that simply, reliably, help.

We don’t need more agents.
We need better ones.

Not louder. Not flashier.
Just agents that actually work—start to finish.