“Think of it as an empowered ChatGPT.”
I’m still explaining to my parents what Zack and I are doing with ngenAOS; recently, my father asked me to explain what an AI agent actually is.
“Think of it as an empowered ChatGPT,” I started. “ChatGPT is a chatbot; you enter text and it chats back at you with a response.” I checked for understanding.
“OK,” my father replied.
“An agent is given tools, like the ability to search for websites, read content, write content to a document, and the ability and autonomy to create and execute a workflow.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can create and train an agent that is an expert in restaurants. I can train it and empower it to: ‘Find the top 20 ranked seafood restaurants in Ocean County, synthesize their Google Reviews, estimate cost per person, describe the ambiance of each, and provide commentary on each place from the perspective of a vegan eater.’”
“Oh,” my father said as he looked up toward the corner of the ceiling—obviously thinking.
“We have different agents for different jobs. Whenever we sign a new client, we train agents on that client’s business and their industry. Some agents scour the web for similar businesses and collect data: what other businesses in that industry are focusing on, trends, promotions, price points, and product valuations, to name a few.”
“Then what?”
I explained that ngenAOS is an Agentic Operating System for AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)—the discipline of being cited in AI answers (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini), not merely ranked on a page. At the center of our infrastructure lies the kernel—the small, trustworthy core that powers our workflow.
“Trustworthy?”
“Yeah, provenance and trust are the foundation of our work. You’ve heard of chatbots making things up — hallucinations, as they are called. If we allow hallucinations into our dataset, then our dataset is corrupted and useless. Our agents that forage the internet bring their data back to the operating system, but that data is strictly validated to ensure its provenance.”
“What do you do with the data?” my mom chimed in.
“We use that data to drive decisions on content, products, and price points. The data is synthesized inside the operating system, and it outputs recommended actions and approaches. Essentially, we locate and identify trends in a client’s industry so they stay ahead of the curve and provide services and products that will be hot, rather than what is currently hot.
You can think of it like this: ngenAOS is a system which continuously measures, learns, and acts in the best interest of our clients to draw more visitors to their online properties and convert those visitors into revenue.”
“Do they have names?” my mother asked.
“Who?”
“The agents.”
“No, Mom, we refer to them by their contracted output: aos-recon, aos-measurement, aos-recon-synthesizer.”
“Aos-recon-synthesizer,” my father repeated. “Interesting.”
“It’s pretty freaking cool, huh?”