Super interesting paper on proactive agents from Google DeepMind. (bookmark it) Proactive assistance usually means autocomplete. Researchers asks what it looks like when an agent offers higher-level cognitive support and picks its own moment to speak. They built a probe and deployed it with 16 participants for a week. Writers create partners by configuring a role and a proactivity level, and relevant partners then take initiative as the writing happens. Three findings stand out: > Participants configured support prospectively, planning for situations they anticipated rather than reacting to interruptions. > They used suggestions for idea generation and also for self-monitoring, which is a purpose proactive tools rarely design for. > And they judged intrusiveness by presentation, valuing lightweight visual representation and non-directive rhetorical framing. The design implications cover customization, timing, engagement and representation. Worth reading if you are building an assistant that acts before being asked, because how the intervention is phrased mattered to users as much as when it arrived. Paper:

Super bullish on WebMCP. Much like Tesla FSD meets the world where it is (streets, stoplights, potholes and all), agents *need* to ride the existing WWW infrastructure… WebMCP makes it more efficient. Some pretty unique wins too. e.g: Next.js dev pages could expose debugging tools directly to agents in the specific tab they’re testing, with page-specific context, instead of sifting through server logs. No separate MCP server to find and configure because the page directly exposes its own 'agent tools'. e.g: in this world 𝚏𝚡 + 𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚗𝚝-𝚋𝚛𝚘𝚠𝚜𝚎𝚛 is a complete web dev stack with zero loss in debugging depth