A lot of work around AI in 2023 was spent on building picks and shovels. I would know this because that was basically the core goal of the o…

A lot of work around AI in 2023 was spent on building picks and shovels. I would know this because that was basically the core goal of the original @llama_index framework. Today, a lot of that is no longer relevant. The core agent abstractions have solidified, and coding agents are letting everyone "engineer" agents at a higher level of abstraction. What continues to have a durable moat is building the context layer for agents. Agents don't inherently have the ability to do things without access to the right tools and data. The context layer can take many forms: - Web search and automation - systems of record - tools to SaaS software Every piece of software needs to become agent native, since agents are the new workers, and they need context to do things. For @llama_index today, we're building a slice of that context layer: the document infrastructure for agents. We are building the best-in-class capabilities for agents to parse the most complex documents into clean context, and also building expanded tooling on top of that. Big shoutout to @VentureBeat for a fantastic interview + article! Our CEO @jerryjliu0 in @VentureBeat , on what's actually changing in the LLM stack: "We've really identified that there's a core set of data that has been locked up in all these file format containers. Ultimately, whether you use OpenAI Codex or Claude Code doesn't really matter.…

Source: Jerry Liu (X) | 2026-05-02