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Everyone is racing to build one agent that can do everything. Justin Schroeder, co-founder of Standard Agents, thinks the future looks more like thousands of tiny ones. Ahead of his talk on domain-specific agents at AGNTCon + MCPCon North America, he explains why tightly scoped agents might be the smarter bet, even if it feels like a step back toward the single-purpose machine learning models of a few years ago.
We dig into standards as metadata you pin to an agent, so that it shows up with everything it needs in its harness. Then we test the idea against the obvious objection: if a big model can already handle the task, why scope down at all? The answer covers forcing functions, a microservices mindset for agent design, and small agents that quietly check issues or unread messages every five minutes. It also covers the surprise $1K bill waiting for anyone who leaves their agents running.
Then it turns into a proper debate. Our host is 99% sure the agent marketplace will never happen, and Justin arrives with a counter that might change his mind (hint: think about where your skills come from). Along the way, we cover agents as tools versus a big-brain router and how anyone keeps track of a thousand agents. We also talk about why the people who know what agents can do and the people who know what they need still have to meet in the middle.
Demetrios Brinkmann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm
Justin Shroeder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpschroeder
Timestamps:
[0:00] Cold open
[1:03] The future is domain-specific agents
[1:51] God models vs specialist agents
[2:20] The perfect Gmail agent
[3:14] Why standards are missing
[3:29] Train the prompt, not the model
[4:30] The harness beats the model
[6:07] Standards and runtimes for agents
[8:17] Why scope down at all
[10:07] Why model routing won't win
[10:29] The surprise $1K bill
[11:12] Agents that build agents
[12:09] Agents as tools
[13:23] Managing a thousand agents
[14:24] Agents for Main Street
[15:37] Agent marketplaces will never happen
[16:52] Skills are just bad agents
[18:04] Skills are already a marketplace
[20:12] Domain experts build the agents
[22:12] Wrap up
