What the Best Agents Share — Mardu Swanepoel, Flinn AI
May 26, 2026 · 10:21
Mardu Swanepoel of Flinn AI identifies four patterns shared by top agents like Cursor, Claude, Manus, and Harvey: focus modes, transparent execution, personalization, and reversibility. Focus modes constrain the action space to improve output quality and align user expectations, as Cursor does with planning and debug modes. Transparent execution shows tool calls and reasoning to build trust and enable early intervention, exemplified by Claude's live task list and Manus's progress tracking. Personalization optimizes speed to understanding through playbooks (Harvey) and memory, so agents follow firm-specific methods. Reversibility bounds downside with rollbacks at line, file, or conversation levels (Cursor) and integration with native undo in Harvey's Word add-in, encouraging users to tackle higher-value tasks.
