A Guide to Which AI to Use in the Agentic Era

One Useful Thing · 5 months ago · 22

The article discusses how AI usage has shifted from chatbot conversations to autonomous agents performing multi-step tasks, requiring users to evaluate three components: underlying models (GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.6, Gemini 3 Pro), apps (websites and specialized tools), and harnesses (systems enabling tool use and task automation). The frontier models now cost at least $20 monthly and differ mainly in bundled features and accessible tools, with OpenAI and Anthropic offering more capable harnesses for document creation and research than Google's comparable model. As a result, selecting AI for specific work depends less on model choice and more on which app and harness provides the required functionality, making the decision more complex than during the chatbot-only era.