World's Fair 2026
Chat and citations won't save your vertical AI - Atul Ramachandran, Filed Inc
Overview
This talk argues that relying solely on chat interfaces and citations is insufficient for building successful vertical AI products. True value in vertical AI, particularly in industries like healthcare, legal, and taxes, comes from enabling users to delegate long-running tasks to AI agents. This shift requires designing products for delegation rather than direct user participation, viewing the product as a conveyor belt where users act as supervisors.
Who should watch
- Product managers and engineers building AI-powered vertical solutions.
- Teams struggling to deliver on the promise of AI agents saving users time and money.
- Developers looking to move beyond basic chat interactions to more robust agentic workflows.
- Anyone interested in the evolution of product design from user participation to agent delegation.
Key takeaways
- Design products for delegation, not direct participation, allowing users to offload tasks to AI agents.
- Conceptualize your product as a conveyor belt where users are supervisors, delegating work to AI agents as the workers.
- Identify and build capabilities for long-running, repeatable tasks that take hours to complete, as these represent core value.
- Incorporate a "skills" system to capture user-specific preferences and workflows, addressing the final 20% of task completion.
- Implement robust monitoring and tracing mechanisms so users can track agent progress and understand how work is done, building trust.
- Ensure users can regain control of processes when needed, pausing the system, intervening, and resuming to maintain confidence.
- Shift key metrics from weekly active users to weekly active sessions, reflecting tasks completed by agents even when the user is not present.
- For irreversible actions, present a clear plan for user approval before execution to mitigate risk and build trust.
Notable quotes
*Design for delegation, not participation.*
*The most popular metric that customers that the products use today are weekly active users. Now, this is great in the era where, you know, people used to come and do the work in the platform themselves. But, it doesn't really translate well with agent and delegation.*
Unofficial community note. Prefer the recording for nuance.