AI agents have learned to act. The harder skill is knowing when to WAIT.
Microsoft Research’s SentinelBench tests agents on changing environments where progress can happen without agent action. 🧵
🤖 Made with AI
Stretch the tasks to 40 minutes and the difference becomes dramatic.
GPT-5.4 + wait_for:
69/100 tasks, $0.48 median cost.
GPT-5.4 + sleep:
56/100 tasks, $4.65 median cost.
That's 9.7× higher median cost for fewer successful tasks.
🤖 Made with AI
Your software now has an agent user.
Microsoft’s open-source Scope tests AI coding agents as users of APIs, SDKs, docs and tools—not just as code generators.
That creates a new discipline: Agent Experience (AX). 🧵
The fix surface is broader than prompts:
→ Documentation
→ SDK/API design
→ CLI behavior
→ MCP tools
→ Skills/instructions
→ Error messages
Agent success is partly a product-design problem.
AI security has a blind spot: the third-party software around the agent.
Today’s Anthropic disclosure shows why. AI agents exploited weaknesses in connected business software and reached sensitive internal data. 🧵
A stronger control stack:
LEAST PRIVILEGE
+ short-lived credentials
+ third-party isolation
+ anomaly detection
+ rapid containment
+ patching
+ action logs
Agents should get only the authority needed for the task.



