In this post we introduce one approach to facilitating tight human + bot collaboration that we think offers exciting possibilities. As opposed to human-in-the-loop, where in a human is looped into an AI driven flow, we show an approach that has both the bot and the human in a tight loop having a back-and-forth interaction mediated via a human tool. Human tool in this case simply means a UI application, within Solvent, it means web apps. Conceptually, one can think of this approach as bringing the CoPilot mode of AI integration into more general human workflows. CoPilot generally means integrating AI into existing software products and systems (excel, docs, Adobe...etc). With HTML (my hands are up, don't shoot 😉), the CoPilot approach can apply to general human workflows that are not tied to any specific product. Of course you can hook AI into any piece of software you create now but we think an integrated platform approach for something such as this works much better,...
Workflow automation is one those perennial technology efficiency promises that has never quite delivered but never goes away. The appeal of the idea is obvious, being able to easily direct computers to perform process tasks without deep technical expertise is the holy grail of the promise of computers. The excitement around AI agents is the latest incarnation of this promise. Workflow automation can be implemented in many forms, the most common is some sort of visual composition approach. Drag-n-drop workflow builders for instance are quite common. The fundamental problem that workflow automation has faced is that it attempts to allow non-programmers to...well, program. This is a fundamental contradiction that always reveals itself once one tries to use these products to do anything beyond the demo reel. More recent takes on the idea have taken on the problem with a hybrid approach, ie code when you need it and UI when you don't,...this is the literal tagline that the popular work...