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Timeline: AI Agent Evolution
#timeline
Chronological reconstruction of how AI agents evolved, combining konstantin's tooling/agent timeline with theo-browne's model eras. Dates are as stated by the speakers (approximate; some are framing rather than precise release dates). Status: tentative where noted.
Agent architecture & tooling (Konstantin)
| Period | Milestone | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Early 2023 | LLM / ChatGPT (pre-chat): ask → answer | No memory, no tools, single-turn |
| Summer 2023 | ReAct agents — LLM can answer or call a function | First "agent loop"; tools give the LLM feedback. See agentic-loops |
| 2023–2024 | Call chains, roles, first agent SDKs, vector DBs, RAG, JSON outputs | Agents use external knowledge |
| 2024 | Chains → graphs (LangGraph); multi-agent (planner/critic); AutoGen, CrewAI; heavy scaffolding | Peak technical complexity |
| Late 2025 | Simplification — a simple agent with ~10 file ops solves hard tasks; era of universal agents = harness | Complexity drops, capability rises |
| 2026 (now) | Harnesses wrapped in outer loops (Ralph loop), run for days; AI factory (no human-in-the-loop) | human-in-the-middle → man-on-the-middle → no human |
| 2027 (forecast) | Dominance of skills-as-memory + agentic-loops | — |
Tooling generations (see evolution-of-agent-tooling): Tools (2022–2024) → MCP (late 2024–2025) → Skills (2025→).
Human-role ladder (see context-as-scarce-resource): prompt-engineer → context-engineer → harness-builder → loop-engineer.
Model capability eras (Theo Browne)
Speaker's framing; model-name→ID mapping is unverified/tentative (see theo-browne).
| Era | Representative model (speaker's term) | Unlocked |
|---|---|---|
| Tool-call era | "Sonnet 3.5" | First reliable tool calls inside a real codebase |
| Long-running-task era | "Opus 4.5" | Multi-hour tasks; self-run/test (his "AI psychosis" began Nov–Dec 2024) |
| Orchestration era | "Mythos / Fable" | Understands itself; spawns sub-models; verifies afterward — a prompt replaces a software factory |
The two timelines rhyme: Konstantin's "universal harness → loops → AI factory" is the system view of Theo's "orchestration era" model capability. See think-wider-not-bigger.
Related Pages
- Concepts: harness, skills-as-memory, evolution-of-agent-tooling, agentic-loops, context-as-scarce-resource, think-wider-not-bigger
- Sources: 2026-07-14-skills-based-on-git, 2026-07-14-everything-we-knew-about-software-has-changed
Uncertainty
- Konstantin: "everything changes every 6 months — nothing is fundamental yet." Treat 2027 as a forecast.
- Theo's model-era names are rhetorical; do not treat as official release labels.