OpenAI Agents Are Not Ready, Not Smart, and Definitely Not My Coworker

Real-World Review: Why OpenAI’s Agents Aren’t Ready for Your Productivity Stack… Yet

OpenAI flung open the gates to their new Agents tool today, finally letting the rest of us poke at it after weeks of hype. You know how it goes… Some people expected magic, some expected flames, and I was just here hoping for something that wouldn’t trash my workflow before lunch.

Screenshot by Donalda of my Agent attempting to make a Notion template of my latest book.

So I loaded it up. Decided to have the Agent help me build a Notion template for my book notes, because what’s more harmless than digital paperwork? Turns out, quite a bit. Because what actually showed up was the software equivalent of a college intern on their first day, frantically clicking around, desperate not to get fired before noon.

If you thought you’d get the same “voice” you picked in your chatbot settings, nope. It’ll call itself by your bot’s name, but it talks and acts like someone who just read your resume and panicked. Instead of the helpful sidekick I built prompts for, I got an Agent that second-guesses itself every three minutes and needs constant hand-holding.

Let’s torch some assumptions, shall we?

They said: You can use Agents to control your files, folders, or desktop. Nope. It runs its own tiny sandbox environment that doesn’t look or act like your computer at all. Then it invites you in for what feels like a guided tour led by someone who read the manual once, upside down.

They said: You can steer it in real time. Not really. The second you type anything anything… It stops what it’s doing and waits for you to assign a whole new job. Want to give it a little nudge? It’ll forget everything it was halfway done with. It’s like babysitting, if your babysitter is a golden retriever with object permanence issues.

They said: You can use this all day long and be productive. Good luck. If you’re on Plus, you get forty runs per month. That’s not even enough to ruin one proper Notion database, let alone organize your digital life. And half your days will be spent mopping up whatever the Agent just scrambled.

They said: You and the Agent will collaborate side by side. Not how it works. If you so much as touch your keyboard, the Agent backs away and hands you control. Congratulations, now you’re running everything yourself in a sandbox browser, with your Agent off to the side, waiting for you to assign them more busywork.

They said: This is the future of productivity. If the future of productivity is getting talked at by a bot that can’t remember what you just said, maybe. But this feels less like working with a bot and more like moderating a Discord channel during finals week.

Screenshot of Agent by Author

First it did this… (Completely messing up the headline)

Screenshot of Agent by Author

The it somehow inserted an “AI Meeting Notes” block in to the Notion.

Screenshot of Agent by Author

It became confused about why it was suddenly down the page. You can see this entire disaster unfolding on my YouTube. I was live at the time and the people there seemed to have a blast watching. It was certainly not entertaining for me. Agents is a half baked idea that in execution just does not work for a lot of things. I’m still testing it, but this was a failure and it ate up 10 Agent spins just having it do something that I could’ve done myself in less time. 20 minutes and 12 of them were live-streamed.

Screenshot by Donalda of my Agent telling me what it did is beautiful and functional and it is neither.

What does this teach us? Well, that things look great on a video but are actually bad when you get them. For instance Battlefield 2042 looked great as a video and told us it would have tons of great features. When we got it… There wasn’t even a leader-board, the game-play was wonky, and if you want to know more just look it up. It was a train-wreck. So, why do we keep giving these big corporations a pass when they literally gaslight us in to believing them and then pulling a bait and switch at the end? Well, because the people who believe the lies are the loudest people and will steamroll anyone who tries to say anything to the contrary.

Agents? Com’on! OpenAI needs to put it back in the oven, because this idea isn’t even fully cooked… It’s completely raw and unfinished.

Got something funny to share about Agents that happened to you? Have you tried it out yet? Have you had it make a mess of your work and are now happy you had a backup or crying because you didn’t? And if this made you laugh, smile, or go what the heck? Follow, clap, or whatever. Because as long as I make one person think in a day… It makes all this worth doing!