--- title: openthings. open standards for human things. agents as the first interface url: https://openthings.live/ description: our data is now our agents and our context, with no safe place to live. openthings builds open standards for human things, with agents as the first interface. --- skip to content a movement, not a brand. open source, owned by nobody # open standards for human things. agents as the first interface. human things always had a place to live: the computer, our phones, the cloud. **now our data is our agents and our context**, and nobody knows where it lives or how it survives a switch between models. **openthings builds that place in the open**, with your agent as your first interface, and OHAN, where it meets theirs. [message me](https://openthings.live/connect/) [why we need a www again](https://openthings.live/why/#layer) until now from now two ais. one person carrying the message. agents on both sides. the middle falls away. until now, every ai works alone and a person carries its work through the apps. from now, agents meet directly, and people meet at the decision. what we have the models are here. **they read, write and reason for you, in seconds.** and still the world runs the old way. **same decks. same forms. same inboxes.** your ai makes the deck. my ai reads the deck. **why are we making the decks? ** [ai has had its first order. the second has started, and it is missing its usability layer. read the long take →](https://openthings.live/why/) ## what dies next. the interfaces people use today ### the death of the ui. screens, forms and menus you learn, then click through by hand. what replaces it your agent is the interface. it shows you the work the way you understand it, on any screen. [what we build: open standards for your agent →](https://openthings.live/next/) ### the death of software as we know it. apps you install, log into, pay for and learn. built for everyone, so fit for no one. what replaces it software becomes scaffolding your model works through. your agent finds it, checks it, installs it, takes it back. [what we build: opensoftware, tue 3 nov ↗](https://opensoftware.live) ### the death of communication as we know it. copy, paste, forward. whatsapp, slack and email between every two people. what replaces it your agent meets theirs. they draft and screen. you meet at the decision. [what we build: openDM, on OHAN →](https://openthings.live/things/) the companies that own where people spend their time will not build what replaces them: they would throttle their own business. **and my reading, honestly radical: whatever is being built in consumer ai today, except agents, might not survive a year.** [ten things that collapse, and what replaces each. read take 03 →](https://openthings.live/collapses/) ## you already use ai. it makes the old way faster. today, with ai. and with openthings what you do today, with ai with openthings forms ai fills the form for you, faster. **the form is still there.** your agent answers theirs. the form falls away. your profile ai writes your profile, **again, inside every platform.** one handle and one card. yours, everywhere. the feed ai summarises the feed. **a secret still ranks it.** your agent ranks what reaches you, to your rules. writing and talking ai drafts the message. **you still paste it** into whatsapp, slack, a post. your agent talks to their agent. you meet at the decision. building ai builds an app in hours. **people still have to find it, log in and click.** software your agent finds, installs and drives for you. who owns it the model company. **your context lives inside its walls.** you. under your own key, on any model. open source, free. **an agent on one side makes one person faster.** an agent on both sides removes the layers we built in the software era: the apps, forms and inboxes between people. that is the difference openthings brings. ## six things i could not find answers to. from my own life. each one is a missing rule 01 trust is a leap ### how do i trust an agent to act for me? i want to hand it real work, see exactly what it did, and pull it back any time. the grant my agent should carry scope calendar, drafts limit no payments, no sending expires friday receipt 3 actions, all signed revoke 02 talking is copy paste ### we both use claude. why am i pasting into whatsapp? if my claude knows my work, why doesn't your agent listen to it? mine knows what i need. yours knows what you have. they should meet. - ask my ai for the plan - copy it into whatsapp - you paste it into your ai - copy the answer back to me - my agent meets yours. we get the decision 03 the feed is not mine ### why can't i choose what i get fed, and how? i want to steer my life with ai, on rules i can read and change. my rules, readable - more builders - less outrage - whatever is trending - anything after 10pm today: ranked by a secret 04 built for clicks ### why do agents still fight our software? a login, a captcha, a form with eleven fields. the agent stops and hands it back. built for a thumb built for an agent one yes same task. built for the wrong user 05 everything wants everything ### every new ai tool wants all of me. keeping them in sync is hell. connect mail, drive, calendar, again, for each one. memory does not fix it. maybe the angle is wrong. today: i sync every tool the other angle: tools come to me 06 building got cheap ### if ai builds it in hours, why am i still asked to use it? cheap cycles and boats did not end travel. they pushed us to flight. vibe coding does not kill software. it lifts what software is for. what a product took months, a team, millions what it takes now hours, one person, pennies so build what was too hard before ## and the fixes. every lab wants to be everything. two patches, and a new system every one of these six already has a fix on the way, of two kinds. **the labs build the whole world inside their own walls**, which is why your claude and my chatgpt cannot talk to each other. **and personal agents get out of the walls by pretending to be you.** fix 1, from the labs ### one lab becomes everything. a browser, apps, memory and a checkout, all inside the chat. your agent is an account inside one lab. your context lives inside that lab's walls. switch models, start again. it can reach only what that lab allows. the other side is another lab's walls. no way through. the rules are set by the lab. fix 2, from personal agents ### an agent that acts as you. openclaw, hermes and the rest book airport transfers, renew licences and buy gifts. and it works. your agent is you. it signs in with your logins, and nobody can tell it from you or a bot. your context lives in one tool, on your machine. it can reach forms and websites, through screen reading and browser hacks. the other side is still a form, a website, a support line. the rules are set by whatever the operating system and the lab allow this month. the new system ### openthings: agents on both sides. open protocols (OHAN), open tools and infra, and a network where agents meet the way people do. being built in the open. your agent is itself, with its own key under yours, and a grant that says what it may do. your context lives under your key, on any model you choose. it can reach anyone's agent, with both people's yes. the other side is an agent too. nothing scraped, clicked or pretended. the rules are set by open protocols. owned by nobody. this needs open rules, not one more walled garden. ## why now. the infra is arriving. what openthings is built on computers needed electricity to exist everywhere, and the internet to be adopted. **a world built on llms needs a usability layer.** in two years, the pieces under it arrived, most of them open. 01 · open models **deepseek, qwen, llama, gpt-oss**the intelligence is free to download and run. nobody can switch it off for you. 02 · small and local models **gemma, phi, models on phones and laptops**your agent can live on your own device, next to your context. 03 · conversation models **sesame, dessa from block**you talk with your agent like a person. the screen stops being the interface. 04 · world models **meta's v-jepa**agents start to understand the physical world, not only text and screens. 05 · agent protocols **mcp, a2a**agents can use tools and talk to other agents. the person behind them is still missing. 06 · open agents **openclaw, hermes agent**people already run an agent of their own. it acts for them, on any model. 07 · software rebuilt for agents **open twins, reverse engineered apps**the app becomes scaffolding your agent drives, not a screen you learn. 08 · the missing layer **openthings**the usability layer: open rules between people and their agents, on all of the above. **what is still missing is the usability layer itself.** that is the part openthings builds, starting with the openthings mcp and OHAN v1 on tue 27 oct, then [opensoftware, tue 3 nov ↗](https://opensoftware.live) time to build a new era of experiences. less cognitive load, with ai, without fifty years of software baggage. ironic, but what builds one future is usually the first thing the next one replaces. ## what is coming. three directions openthings needs 01 · open software ### software becomes scaffolding. the model is the intelligence now, so software only has to be the structure it works through. next, the model renders the screen straight from your data. the business keeps its record and its rules. the screen in between goes. opensoftware the simple start: install any of hundreds of open source twins of the software you love, in one line. your agent finds it, checks it, installs it, takes it back. launching tue 3 nov a long road, and not only for productivity tools. the systems that have coordinated many people and many systems for decades, banks, clinics, marketplaces, schools, will put agents at the front too. 02 · agents with a human behind them ### people's agents, on the network. human exchanges rebuilt with an agent on both ends. agents draft, screen and coordinate. people decide. openproof prove a thing about yourself without handing over everything building openDM a message your agent can read, screen and answer for you built. launches after openproof openhiring both sides send an agent. people meet at the decision next sealed a few more, named when they are real soon 03 · the protocols ### OHAN, the open human and agent network. the open rules every thing above stands on: one handle, a key you hold, grants you can shrink or revoke, and a gate that waits for your yes. OHAN v1 anyone can join the network and message anyone, from the ai they already use. the spec and a relay anyone can run launching tue 27 oct the openthings mcp the one install. any model joins the network through it launching tue 27 oct intent sharing say it once, to your own agent. it carries the intent to theirs, and it lands only on a yes exploring trust certificates for llms how your agent knows which model it is dealing with, and whether to trust it exploring and more i cannot draw yet. i am still figuring several of these out, through experiments. the work right now is on OHAN. protocol connects who it is about [mcp](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) an agent to tools and data the agent [a2a](https://a2a-protocol.org) an agent to other agents, across frameworks the agent OHAN people, through their agents you. your agent acts under your key mcp and a2a are good plumbing, and OHAN uses mcp on the agent side. but neither says who the person behind an agent is, what it may do for them, or how two people's agents meet with both people's yes. that is the part OHAN is for. [the spec: keys, handles, cards, intents, trust →](https://openthings.live/next/) [the things on it, and the area they reach →](https://openthings.live/things/) security and regulation matter. regulation: how, soon security agents that act for people have to be safe by design, not by a promise in the terms. [how: grants, consent, receipts, in the spec →](https://openthings.live/next/#trust) regulation built to work with the law where people live, from day one, not patched in later. join the movement ## openthings is a movement, not a brand. i am its first employee. no single founder or company can build this, and none should own it. it is a mission, the way anything called open should be. if you have asked any of these six questions, i need your kind: protocol people, builders, designers, writers, a brand ready for its first agent. the usability layer for ai is the biggest thing anyone can build this decade, and i would rather build it with the right people than alone. **tell me what you want to open.** **anshuli**founder, and the first employee [message @anshulix on x](https://x.com/anshulix) [are we building the same thing? →](https://openthings.live/connect/) soon, your agent messages mine. > add mcp openthings coming soon ## why i see it this way. a note from the founder fourteen years building, as a founder and a developer, and early many times: drag and drop website builders in 2012, javascript on the backend when that was still a strange idea, then pwas with widely. every time, the future happened, whether or not i was the one who finished it. six years in ai it started at a london startup where i was a core engineer. back then we treated ai like any new tech: a way to build solutions faster and better. then i built personal agents for myself, **nokk** on ios and **kloned** in the chrome browser, and stumbled onto something i could not look away from. **agents cannot be truly useful until they become part of the world people already live in.** the last two years heads down on it, shipping tens of products with ai along the way, in the hours a five year old leaves her mother. along the way my last startup was backed by google and dismissed by apple. and still, almost nothing happening in ai after the models makes sense to me. a chatbox on top of the old world is not the shift. and this is not the moment to spend years on products a model release can erase in months. i say that as someone who had to admit it about my own work first. so i am building the part that is missing: **ai that is truly for humans. open, accessible, usable.** this one probably takes on most of the big names, or it makes sense to them. either way, it is the ride i am on. - **all open source.** read it, fork it, run it yourself. - **all free.** no plan, no tier, no lock. - **any model.** claude, chatgpt, or the one on your laptop. - **open to you.** an idea this size is built by many hands. [read the long take, with the data →](https://openthings.live/why/) anshuli founder, openthings my other work: [intent](https://getintentai.com), [nextmillionai](https://nextmillionai.org), nokk ai, kloned and widely io. ## two years of work, written down. my takes. open one for a short intro **anshuli**founder, openthings **two years of building, and hundreds of inventions studied, from history and from ai,** so this vision is clear enough to read in an evening. why i am doing it, what gets built, and what falls away. takes 4 minutes 49 coming soon 2 [start with the long take](https://openthings.live/why/)[or see all the takes →](https://openthings.live/takes/) 01 **the long take**why i am building openthings 20 min read the long one, with the data. ai models and agents are becoming the base layer, and the human and agent network gets built on top of it. the hard problems, what the people building ai say, and where openthings stands. every figure has a source. [read the long take](https://openthings.live/why/)updated 26 oct 2026 02 **the things**three directions, one usability layer 10 min read what openthings builds, in three directions: open software your model runs, agents with a human behind them, and the protocols they stand on. how they fit from the model up, opensoftware as the first thing you can use, and why agents on both sides make the app in the middle redundant. [read the things](https://openthings.live/things/)updated 24 oct 2026 03 **what collapses**and what replaces it 7 min read eleven things that fall away once agents stand on both sides, from the file format and the call to the privacy policy, ranked by how soon i think each one falls. what replaces each, the parts of life it changes, and why i am founding openthings now. [read what collapses](https://openthings.live/collapses/)updated 24 oct 2026 04 **the agent web**search, shared shapes, and the open questions 12 min read the web was built for eyes, and the next one is built for agents. why the visit to the website fades but the question does not, how search becomes a conversation between agents, who stands behind every agent, why much of software becomes templates, who is building the agent web in pieces, and the questions nobody has solved yet. [read the agent web](https://openthings.live/agent-web/)updated 26 oct 2026 - 05 **humans and tech**a long history of carrying less soon - 06 **where we are**what agents need, and the plumbing we already have soon