I Turned Coding Agents Into a Strategy Game — Ido Salomon, AgentCraft

Okay. Hi everyone. Uh I'm Solomon. I am

the creator of ATMCraft and I also

created MCPUI which became MCP apps and

MCP steering committee. I've done a

bunch of other stuff. Uh but we're here

to talk about why we're the bottleneck

and why we don't have to be.

So, uh as you all know and use every

day, agents are amazing. There's so much

they can do uh from generating cat memes

to B2B SAS apps. So if they are so

amazing, we have to ask why aren't we

all unstoppable? Why doesn't everyone

have an army of agents that just does

whatever they want? So it should be

relatively easy. I mean you just have a

bunch of monitors and you spin up 25

cloud code agents and you're done. So

the reality is that it's just not that

simple to do something like that. you

need to a really want to use agents and

secondly once you actually spin them up

each one of these agents requires you to

steer them direct them review them and

when it's at scale especially it's just

exhausting we need to find the skills to

allow us to do it without burning out so

in reality we are the bottleneck

and the the cool thing here is that

while we are the bottleneck

The skills that we need to do these

things to uh find ourselves not burning

out every time we use an agent are with

us all along. Uh if you try to compare

it to other stuff that you've been doing

outside of programming, for example,

playing video games, it's not really

that different. Like if if you're

playing Warcraft, for example, or Sims,

and you have a bunch of different uh

units running around, you need to

understand what they're doing and

supervise all of it. How different is

that from from actually inspecting

agents? So I took this concept uh too

far and I created agent uh which is a

game inspired orchestrator uh that tries

to bring all that good stuff together

into work.

So let's take uh a quick look of what

that actually looks like and try and

understand the journey that we can go

through to really raise the ceiling of

how humans and agents can collaborate.

So, uh, this is AgentCraft. Uh, there's

really a lot to unpack here. Uh, so

we'll just go through the basics really

quick. Um, what you see here is an

agent. Uh, it's an actual representation

of a cloud code or openclaw, whatever

agent that you can imagine. Uh, it can

be detected on your device or you can

actually spawn new ones directly from a

craft. Uh, so like I said, you have like

codecs and uh, open code etc.

at your command.

>> Uh, and these agents can do everything.

They're just normal agents. Uh, so I can

just prompt them in this nice side panel

that also has voice. So there's

multimodality here. Uh, and just do

something for me.

>> Prompt. Prompt.

>> And now these agents can do whatever.

Uh, and if you look around you would see

that the map has a a bunch of different

elements. So you have buildings. These

buildings represent functionalities. So

for example, if you can manage your

plugins or skills, uh you have like

integrated terminal, integrated git, uh

you can do in your all of your work from

within this space.

So now that we have this and we

understand the basics, let's look at

what we can do uh to raise the ceiling.

So the first step is obviously

visibility. I need to understand what's

going on. What are my agents doing? So,

I have this nice side panel and it shows

me the different agents and what their

task is and what the last thing they did

is and what they're currently doing.

Everything I need to quickly understand

who needs my attention and who doesn't.

The second part of it is we're not just

limited to this. We have a map. So, I

can take let's say my file system,

project it onto the map, and now I can

see exactly what my agents are doing.

Not just by looking at a list of stuff.

I can actually see okay this agent is

now working on this directory or this

file and these files are represented as

runes on the map. So I can really look

at each one and see exactly what each

agent did and when. And now I can take

this nice information because we are the

orchestrator uh and use that to create

linkages and now I can create cool stuff

like heat maps. So I can really easily

see what's going on. And the the other

aspect is that now that we have this

visibility, that's not really enough. We

need to be able to react to what's going

on. If someone needs my attention, I

need to be able to quickly jump to it.

So much like video games or RTS games or

Civilization, whatever, you would click

uh spacebar and it would just take you

to the nearest thing that actually

needed your attention. So you can really

easily understand what's going on. and

jump from one thing to the other and

answer questions or approve plans, etc.

That was nice. I mean, it's a nice step

just to have that visibility, but it's

not really enough. It's pretty

exhausting to keep looking at what the

agents are doing in the granularity of

what files are they using and what tools

are they using at the moment. So, we

need something else. Uh and the reason

is that we have like two two main

problems here. Uh one is that there's

just too much to hold in our heads. Even

if I can understand what's going on and

I can see everything, I can't really do

like 20 things at the same time. I can't

even think of the next thing I want to

do if I have this, you know, huge coding

project or whatever. So I need to find

some way to fix that. Uh so we can I

mean we can tell the agents uh you know

go through my codebase, find out what

the next things I need to do are, create

these tasks for me and I just click a

button, I accept the quest and there's

some agent that does it for me which is

fun. Uh it's cool. Uh but the next

problem here is that okay now I have 20

stuff going at the same time and I have

to babysit each and every one and that

is completely exhausting. So you could

ask okay we have agents agents are

amazing as we've established so I can

just go ahead and tell the agent to do

it for me now it's called software

factories but at the time it was just

doing stuff autonomously uh so you can

give it like a general sense of what you

want it would spawn an orchestrator and

break it down for you and run it all in

well in this case it's a local uh

container so everything is just done in

isolation and I don't need to do any

babysitting the agent does it for me. On

top of that, you have loops, which

everyone really likes right now. So, you

can do cool things like just tell it to,

I don't know, scan Twitter for cool

stuff you want to build or scan your

GitHub, and it will just create these

nice uh features for you in the

background without you needing to do too

much up front.

The bad thing is that I mean this is

nice uh but what do I do when I have

again I don't know I would say 20 but

even five things to review at the same

time. Uh it's very very hard to get that

out of the way. So what I did is create

uh this like review kit. So I get the

entire changes I need and I get uh what

files changed if you want to go like

file by file or you can get just get

visual evidence. So you can actually see

videos of what changed or photos of what

changed so you can really quickly

understand what you want or even run a

few uh instances in parallel and just

pick the best implementation out of

these.

So now that we have this we have uh

visibility and we have autonomy uh it's

pretty cool like we reached a pretty

good place in raising the ceiling of

what we can do with agents but it's

still pretty exhausting. I mean it's it

was fun. Uh, but now I have to ask

myself, do I really need to be the only

one doing this? It's pretty lonely to

just talk to agents all day and trying

to and you know, if you look at uh what

a team does, for example, if it's just

me, that's fine. But if I have a team, I

might not even be the right person to

review what's going on. So, I need

something else. Uh, and that something

is collaboration. We can just have other

people join us. So the way that looks in

agent craft is that I can create these

uh you can call it you know war halls

war room whatever uh host them it's like

completely local but you can do like

tunnels and people can join you h so I

can create a room and let's say I have a

product designer in my team in this case

uh it's my wife and I can approve uh her

otherwise she'll be mad uh so I can

approve her and she does her thing she

designs whatever and I as an engineer

can not only see that that's that's her

um I can not only see that on my map uh

I can actually take that and follow off

off of it

>> prompt prompt

>> yeah that's just like her um so I can

take that design follow up on it

implement it while she keeps working uh

and the cool thing here is that not only

can I hand off or fork and kind of have

this shared workspace so I'm not really

bound anymore or to Git. I can use Git,

but I'm not really bound to something.

Everyone is working together. Uh you can

see that there's also some kind of chat

between not only between the people

within the room, but also between

agents. So we can have this really nice

notice board of exactly what each person

is doing, what each agent doing. They're

all aware of each other and they can

collaborate much more closely uh than

you normally would be able to do. Uh so

for example, here I can say, okay, I

took off this design task.

Uh so now we have oh by the way this is

also from devices you can have like

mobile and and if you like telegram you

can use telegram whatever floats your

boat. So we have visibility and we have

autonomy and we have collaboration so we

managed to raise the ceiling. Uh it's

now possible especially if you're power

users to do really cool stuff and use

more agents and do more things. But the

interesting thing here was, you know, if

I looked at the feedback I got, it's not

just that power users were able to do

more. The cooler thing for me was that

people that had even nothing to do with

agents or nothing to do with

productivity, uh, come and say, uh,

okay, my kids really loved it and they

use it all the time to to orchestrate

agents, which they didn't do until now.

uh or you know someone that flunked out

of college because he played Starcraft

and now you can suddenly do really

productive stuff with it. Uh and a bunch

of other examples of kind of bringing

communities that so far were kind of

behind into this new world of

productivity.

So we need to raise the ceiling but we

also need to uh lower the floor. We need

to have some kind of way to take no

probably around 90% of the people in the

world and bring them into this hygienic

future without having them burn out.

So again, I took it too far. Um, and

there's this uh currently named TBD um

potentially loopers. Uh the idea here is

okay why don't why do we need something

like you know Warcraft which is

potentially very complicated uh

especially or might be even daunting if

you're not into the granularity of what

files are there are or how uh complex

the UI is and kind of try to find a

lower denominator of what makes stuff

accessible especially now that agents

are much more capable so instead of

granularity or having like exactly what

files they're working on maybe I can

have it more of a mobile game level uh

have projects that they keep returning

to and use loops and other stuff that

rely on agents being more autonomous to

have like a very basic level of I prompt

I get the result I don't really care

perhaps about the way I can see it if I

want to and I have this really nice

interactive and cool experience that

makes me want to come back to this and

obviously I mean this is one

visualization uh it can really resonate

with some people but might not might not

present to others because we're not all

the same and what may appear like

amazing and easy to one person can

appear very difficult to another. Uh but

here uh I'm trying to look at a way to

make this more customizable. Try and

understand what it is that you as a

person need in order to understand and

want to use these tools. So this is a

very very early draft. Um but if you

want to use it, please let me know. So

we're the bottleneck. I think we've

established that uh pretty well until

now. But the skills that we need to stop

being the bottleneck and enable this new

future are already with us. So we are

the bottleneck, but we don't have to be.

And I hope that you all can take what's

relevant to you and your life and apply

it forward.

So I would ask you for two things. One,

agent is already out there. Like you can

just npx install agent as a website uh

and do your thing. Uh this new thing

that I just showed you uh potentially

loopers uh is still experimental. I'm

still trying to understand the interest

and what people are actually looking for

to uh get the floor that they want or

the ceiling that they want. So, please

uh go here and express your interest and

tell me what you're looking for so I can

know what to do with this. And thank

you.

I got it.