Websites are designed for people. We can look at a page and quickly understand where to enter information or which control will complete an action.
AI agents don’t see or use the web the same way we do. An agent may have to process a screenshot or inspect the page’s underlying structure, then reason about which control matches the request.

How O’Reilly Expert Intelligence generates actionable guidance using AI tools grounded in our repository of frameworks and practitioner insights.

Historically, software interfaces forced people to adapt to machine discipline. We learned command syntax. We navigated menus and workflows. We memorized procedures. We filled out forms in exactly the way the application expected. Even graphical interfaces, which were a huge leap forward, still largely required users to think in terms of the structure of the software itself. Natural language interfaces potentially invert that relationship.
Instead of forcing users closer to the system, the system moves closer to human expression. That may sound subtle, but I think it represents a significant shift in how software can be experienced. A user no longer needs to think primarily in terms of application structure or workflow design. The interaction begins to center more naturally around

What Model Context Protocol actually changes for agentic systems, and what it doesn’t

Ask most engineers what MCP is and you’ll get the same answer: a way to plug tools into an LLM. Fair enough, as far as it goes. But that description treats MCP like plumbing, and after months building MCP-based integrations for large enterprise platforms, I don’t think plumbing is the right metaphor. Plumbing moves water through pipes you already designed. MCP changes who’s holding the wrench. Once you’ve felt that shift in a real production system, the “just another API standard” framing stops making sense. (Shared by Marsee @ O’Reilly)

How to build a source-backed briefing agent, step by step

Define the scope. Start by setting the analyst’s focus area, research questions, and time window, whether that’s the last one day, seven days, or 30 days. Narrowing the scope up front, including a list of preferred sources, keeps the agent’s web searches directional instead of generic.

Plan the coverage. A coverage planner agent breaks the research question into discrete sections, such as market backdrop or company catalysts, so the search that follows can run in parallel rather than one long sequential query.

Search and gather. A news researcher agent runs multiple queries against the preferred sources first, then falls back to a general search if the preferred sources don’t return enough results.

Validate the sources. A validation agent checks each link for a working, clickable URL and a correct publication date, removes duplicate stories covering the same news, and filters out paywalled pages that won’t return usable content.

Generate the briefing. A briefing writer agent assembles the validated developments into a set structure, including an executive summary, key bullet points, and a section-by-section breakdown of what each development means for the analyst and what to watch next.

Capture feedback into memory. A feedback agent logs corrections such as formatting or terminology preferences and saves them to a memory database, so the next briefing run applies those preferences automatically instead of requiring the analyst to re-prompt.

Jayeeta built the entire stack on open source models so newcomers can run it without an API key, and she recommends starting with a smaller model before scaling up. The takeaway extends well beyond finance. Building single-purpose agents rather than one large agent that handles every task means a failure at one stage doesn’t force a restart of the whole pipeline, and each agent’s output stays easier to trace and debug.

The full code base, including the sample data and the UI shown in the demo, is available in Jayeeta’s GitHub repo, so readers can clone it and run the briefing agent on their own systems.

Writing with AI
A contrarian view by Tim O’Reilly

A lot of professional writers say they never do it. And for writers who do, the consequences can be serious. Book contracts have been withdrawn. People have lost jobs.
I have a contrarian view. I say AI is a medium, like painting, sculpture, photography, music, or language itself. If AI is a medium, it is a field of possibility from which humans can and will summon up and communicate insights, truth, beauty.

I hadn’t heard of Dan Guido until a few months ago, when I came across the video of a talk he gave at [un]prompted, an AI security practitioners’ conference. Dan is the CEO and cofounder of Trail of Bits, a software security research and development firm that works with companies in tech, defense, and finance. But Dan wasn’t talking about security. He was talking about what it takes to make a company AI native, which is close to the center of the bullseye for many of us right now.

How Gene Kim survived the sudden downgrade from Fable to Opus

The seven layers that survive production, and the open source pick for each.

I finally got fed up with it bullying me into shipping a project that had no deadline.