The easy demo phase is over
It is no longer impressive for an agent to complete one curated browser task under ideal conditions. The category is being judged on whether it can survive real interfaces and imperfect timing.
Reliability means managing overlays, hidden states, pagination, retries, and browser variance without collapsing into confusion.
Interface drift is the real battleground
Web interfaces change constantly. Labels move, buttons disappear, flows fork, and scripts introduce delay. An agent that cannot recover from drift will never become durable product infrastructure.
That is why reliability now matters more than viral demos.
Why this matters for product teams
The same logic applies beyond browser agents: agents become trusted only when they are predictable under messier conditions than the launch clip shows.
The market is now pricing resilience more accurately than spectacle.