Glean

WTF Is the Context Layer? The Missing Infrastructure for Production Agents — Prukalpa Sankar

Jul 14, 2026 · 20:54

Prukalpa Sankar, founder of Atlan, argues that the missing infrastructure for production AI agents is a 'context layer' that encodes business knowledge, expertise, and norms into machine-usable form. She describes how her team built 300 skills and 40 agents but hit problems like context sprawl, dependency management, and skill quality. Sankar proposes a context layer with versioning, lifecycle management, and compounding learning loops from agent traces, enabling teams to share and maintain business context like code. She concludes that context is both king and intellectual property, differentiating companies when models and intelligence are commoditized.

Survive the AI Knife Fight: Building Products That Win — Brian Balfour, Reforge

Jul 14, 2025 · 14:10

Brian Balfour, CEO of Reforge, argues that winning in today's AI knife-fight requires answering 'What do I build and why will it win?' by focusing on proprietary data, unique functionality, and unmet customer needs rather than building custom AI. He illustrates with Granola, which entered a crowded AI note-taker market by understanding users wanted help taking better notes, not full automation, and assembled off-the-shelf AI (DeepGram, Anthropic, OpenAI) with unique data (user notes plus transcription) and functionality (Mac app, calendar integration) to create a competitive edge. Balfour warns competitive advantages now last only 2-3 weeks, so teams must sequence smaller moats continuously, each buying time to execute faster. The talk emphasizes treating AI as Lego blocks—assembling pre-trained models, data, and product superpowers into a system that spins a data flywheel.