AI agents have spent two years competing on the same thing: independence. Less oversight, fewer clicks, more autonomy, that was the pitch. It didn’t matter if the agent lived in a browser extension, a cowork app, or a coding tool. I think that pitch has become the industry’s biggest liability. At Decodo, we recently reviewed dozens of these agents and tested them ourselves. We are at the point where businesses are starting to rely on the agents that know how to switch caution on when the moment calls for it.
Everyone can already do the easy part
Two years ago, chaining a handful of actions into one task was a genuine differentiator. “Save hours of manual work,” every landing page said. It’s not a winning point anymore. Most agents on the market, browser-based or not, can now string several steps together. They plug into outside tools without much trouble. That race is over, and I don’t think it was ever the hard part. Capability parity is what happens once enough vendors copy a feature. This category hit that point faster than most.
Money is where the real test starts. A growing number of agents can now complete a purchase outright, on their own. They no longer just queue one up for a human to approve. That’s a genuine achievement, one that touches payment details, order accuracy, and liability all at once. But completing a purchase and knowing when not to are two different skills, and almost nobody has built both.
