Insight
The Assistant Left the Sidebar
Every product put its AI in a sidebar you open inside that product. Now the assistant gets its own email, calendar and place in the company directory, so you reach it like a colleague, and the product's job changes from hosting the assistant to being easy to share with one.
Five sidebars
Five product windows side by side, each opening its own AI sidebar. The five assistants don't know what the others saw, so the person copies context between them by hand.
One name in the directory
The sidebars fade out and one entry appears in the team directory: a name, an email address, a calendar. Work arrives from many products through cc, @mention, assign and the group chat.
The product's new front door
One product shrinks to the two surfaces the agent needs: the share dialog ("what can this colleague see?") and an activity row signed with the agent's own name. The sidebar goes away, and the share dialog gets bigger.
In early October, Google gave its agent a work account: an email address, a calendar, a spot in the company directory. A day later, Cisco said you can invite agents into a meeting. I've designed AI sidebars, and the idea was simple: put the help next to the work. But every product added its own, so people ended up with five helpers that don't talk to each other.
When the assistant is a colleague, it arrives through things people already know: cc, @, assign. I think that makes the boring parts matter more. Sharing, who can see what, whose name is on the change. I'm not sure what's left inside the product for the assistant.