In this week’s WITOT, we ask what happens when the browser starts “driving.” With OpenAI’s Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet, AI agents can remember your sessions, act across tabs, and deliver confident answers… fast. But speed isn’t the same as sense. If we outsource the route-finding, we risk losing the mental map that helps us judge sources, bias, and authority.
We draw a line between two kinds of truth: settled facts (where a single answer is useful) and perspective questions (where you need a platter of viewpoints). Today’s agentic browsing often collapses both into one “final” output. Great for convenience, risky for judgment. We also dig into permission creep and incentives: when an agent has to see everything to be useful and will be able to do the driving, who is the customer and who becomes the product?
It’s not all doom. We sketch a more human pattern: provenance on by default, an off-switch for automation, and design that surfaces primary sources before conclusions. Plus a hopeful twist: “geocaching for AI.” How can using agents widen discovery and spotlight the long tail rather than narrow it.
This is a conversation about values in product craft: keeping the speed and keeping our information sense.
Key themes
Speed vs sense: convenience taxes information literacy.
Fact Mode vs Perspective Mode: different questions need different UX.
Agent “babysitting,” provenance by default, and the off-switch.
Permissions & power: customer or product: who benefits from your data?
Brand as primary source: why credibility will matter more in an AI-mediated web.
“Geocaching for AI”: designing for serendipity and the long tail.
Links
Hiba on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hibaganta/
The Needful is Hiba’s newsletter on cultural intelligence for sharper, human-led product decisions. It’s for indie founders and small teams who want clarity without the AI hype. Expect pragmatic strategy, mental models, and cultural research that lift your team’s thinking. Hiba reads features, stories, and signals in one go — from product to org culture — so you can ship with craft, protect user trust, and keep real judgment in the loop.
Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-horak/
Tom is the founder of All Shapes, a design and product studio working with founders, scale-ups and innovative enterprises to build meaningful digital tools that last. All Shapes blends craft, culture and human clarity — helping teams move from early concepts to high-performing, values-aligned experiences.
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