Managing the Machines

How multi-agent systems are reshaping work, hierarchy, and opportunity.

Author

Jason Yingling
September 15, 2025

AI agents have been one of the year’s biggest upgrades. With more apps adopting the Model Context Protocol (MCP), large language models can now plug into third-party tools far more smoothly. Expect 2026 to bring even tighter integrations and agents that work hand-in-hand with other agents.

But there’s still a gap between what agents can do and what people actually want them to do. Last week I wrote about agentic browsers that can research, shop, and get scammed. Do you really want an AI picking out a laptop for you with zero oversight?

Meanwhile, Google (and others) are flattening org charts as AI tools take over middle-management-style tasks. The open question: when agents start managing the work, who manages the agents?

📰 Article
Turning multi-agent AI into strategic business leverage
LeadDev
Smartsheet shows how agents become useful when people stay involved. Give engineers room to pick the tools that fit their work and guide how they use them. Without that focus agents drift from leverage into distraction.

📰 Article
The Rise of Computer Use and Agentic Coworkers 
a16z
A solid look at how “computer use” is becoming key to bringing agentic AI into organizations, especially when legacy software lacks MCP or APIs. The big takeaway for me was how much room there is to help enterprises adopt these tools beyond what general models provide.

🎧 Listen
For the Agent Era, Work Charts Beat Org Charts
The AI Daily Brief
As organizations begin adding agents to their workflows, they have the potential to reshape traditional structures. The AI Daily Brief explores how agents can flatten org charts while also creating space for new roles.

“There’s also the complicating fact that in the agent era, everyone becomes a manager. Every human employee is over time going to have big sets of agents that they orchestrate on an ongoing and dynamic basis, adding significant complications to trying to get all that information into the org chart.”

The AI Daily Brief

📰 Article
Apple Plans AI-Powered Web Search Tool for Siri to Rival OpenAI, Perplexity
Bloomberg 
Word on the street is Apple is working with Google to integrate search functionality into Siri in the spring. They've dubbed the project Apple World Intelligence aiming to turn Siri into an "answer engine". Apple is leaning on its hardware edge and longtime partners to carry it into the AI era. And just imagine the training data Google’s Gemini could gain if it ends up on every iPhone.

💿 New Feature Drop
OpenAI added a new feature to branch off of an existing conversation. This should be very useful to let you keep context and explore different directions within chat.

Thanks for reading,
Jason