korrents

What Addy Osmani thinks about AI agents

@addy-osmani · 22 positions · 0 changes of mind

Engineering leader and author who spent 14 years at Google, most of it on Chrome and Chrome DevTools, rising from software engineer to director of engineering, and who created TodoMVC and helped push Core Web Vitals.

Addy Osmani did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

2 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Addy Osmani has said — not written or endorsed by them.

2 positions so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

  1. Our readingReading every agent trajectory has stopped being possible, and what replaces it is demanding an end-to-end account of the decisions that were made.

    Their wordsThe first thing I do is I try to make sure that if there is a summary at the very end, here are all the decisions that were made, I will read through that end to end. If there hasn't been, I will prompt for that decision process.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 12th of 22 in this recording

    Interesting

  3. Our readingBuilding a system that does the prompting for you is not a break with software history but the next rung on the same ladder of rising abstraction.

    Their wordsAnd it's effectively the next step of, you know, every phase of of software evolution is just like a rising tide of abstractions. This is the next abstraction.

    ↗From Chrome DevTools to AI Engineering, with Addy Osmaniyoutube.com 14th of 22 in this recording

    Interesting