I saw this post from YC: "From OpenAI’s DeepResearch to xAI’s DeepSearch, we’re seeing the first real push toward autonomous tools that can plan, execute, and complete tasks like research, outreach, and coding with minimal human input."<p>It got me thinking, are these AI Agents actually useful or valuable to anyone?<p>I'm fairly technical and I use AI to generate code to make POC projects go faster. I'm not on board with blindly 'vibe coding' though, I think it's dangerous and potentially slower when you get screwed over later trying to fix a large project. I think from other discussions, many on HN are in a similar boat as me - that is, using AI for code generation is certainly valuable, but having an 'agent' just 'work' for you probably isn't.<p>But anyways, research and outreach, how about those, anyone finding use for these use cases? I've seen a ton of criticism on these deep research products. They seem akin to summarizing the first page of links of a google search, and they're full of sources you'd want to ignore anyways for serious research (e.g. reddit posts). So I'm dubious as to their quality.<p>Another theme that I think could be useful is using LLMs as advanced/easier RPA tools. Basically, think RPA with some flexibility based on different contexts that can be captured via text. Maybe this is what this 'MCP' hype is all about.<p>So I'm very curious, who's using what would count as 'AI Agents' (i.e. something more than text chat/prompts), and getting real value from them?