Today's Bytedance AI Group Chat Excerpt

See what the smartest internet people in the world are talking about 👇
*Original quotes included, but with vernacular revisions added
*You'll definitely understand it, recommend saving it
1、Agent vs App, essentially Google vs site search
Original quote: "Agentic internet is more like desktop internet, universal Agent will be far stronger than site-specific Agent"
Group used Xiaohongshu as an example: most young people now use Xiaohongshu instead of traditional search engines like Baidu, but using Xiaohongshu search means you can only search content within Xiaohongshu
While universal Agent (ChatGPT, Doubao) can help you search the entire web + do things for you directly, clearly the latter is stronger
Users go where the entry point is
2、Current MCP
Original quote: "Many MCPs now just wrap Open API with an MCP layer, without providing high-level Tools"
Many MCPs now are essentially "APIs with a different shell", you originally had to click 10 buttons (API), now it's still 10 buttons, just with a different interface (MCP)
3、To build real Tools: one button direct results, not API
Original quote: "Tool is the deterministic implementation and abstract packaging of specific processes and data"
Agent should achieve: help you compare (compare prices), help you choose (select optimal), help you do (execute directly)
Before: open Meituan and select a restaurant yourself
After: tell Agent one sentence "help me order a nearby highest-rated lunch under 30 yuan" "help me buy next week's cheapest Shanghai→Tokyo flight"
You don't even know which service you used
At this point, if you're only an API provider, users no longer belong to you
4、The biggest risk: you become "data source"
Original quote: "If someone else is responsible for distribution and you're just providing the underlying Open API for them to distribute, it's hard to build a business model"
Group used Zhihu as an example
Before: users open Zhihu, read answers
Now: user asks Agent, GPT directly summarizes Zhihu content for you
This causes content to be Zhihu's but users no longer visit Zhihu
5、What's the solution to the above situation?
Original quote: "Package higher-level Tools, provide unique user value in Tools, others distributing it is beneficial and harmless to you"
Don't fear being used by Agent, instead: make Agent unable to live without you
If you're just "restaurant data API", anyone can replace you
But if you are: "automatically plan weekly diet for users + control budget + auto-checkout" then Agent actually must call you
If you're the latter, Agent will bring users to you, you just lie back and count money
However, original quote: "Current agent tools only have data, no process"
Many Tools now just give you a bunch of data, but what's truly valuable is: getting things done, for example:
Data-type Tool: tells you BTC price
Process-type Tool: auto-trades for you + risk control + profit-taking
6、Tools are also depreciating
Original quote: "As AI evolves, the irreplaceability cost of tools is also getting lower"
Because Tools are increasingly easy to copy 😅 With the emergence of Claude and similar tools, booking systems that were hard to build before can now be replicated quickly with AI + API
If you only know how to build Tools, it's already worthless
7、So what's the real moat then?
Original quote: "Process and data, that's the business"
What's truly valuable going forward is not "can you do it or not"
But: do you have something others can't get
For example
① Data: user order history, user preferences, real-time transaction data
② Process (most important): how you recommend, how you decide, how you optimize results (algorithm)
③ Cost: you're cheaper, faster, higher success rate
④ User relationships: accounts, subscriptions, payments (like Tencent's, already assembled most of your relationship network, you can't build another Feixin
Others can copy your features, but it's hard to copy your business
8、Agent is not a threat, but a new distribution channel
Original quote: "agent is a quicker channel to distribute products"
Don't treat Agent as enemy, but as "free traffic entry point"
Before you had to spend money on traffic, but now Agent can directly bring users to you, like: what App Store / Google did back then
——————
😎 Summary:
1、In the Agent era, essentially distribution rights move up (Agent) + capabilities move down (API)
Users in the future won't open Apps everywhere, but directly let AI (Agent) do things for them
👉 Whoever controls AI controls the user entry point
2、OpenAPI ≠ product, real competition is in Tools (higher-level capabilities)
Merely providing "interfaces/data" doesn't count as a product
👉 What's truly valuable is: the ability to directly help users get things done (Tools)
3、The ideal form of MCP is standardized Tools, not API wrapper layer
MCP originally intended to do "make AI-usable functionality standards"
👉 But now many are just API with different skins, not truly solving the problem
4、Just doing API = being eaten by Agent and losing users, just doing Tools = entering ecosystem but not safe
👉 Users will be intercepted by AI, you won't make money, but if you only build simple tools, they're easily copied, no moat
5、Real moat: process + data + cost structure + user lock-in
▪️Do you have data others can't get
▪️How do you do things step by step properly (workflow)
▪️Are you cheaper/faster
▪️Are users already used to using you
6、Future won't be App vs Agent, but: who becomes the "irreplaceable node" in the Agent ecosystem
Future isn't App and AI eliminating each other
👉 But: who can become the service that AI can't live without