In this episode of The New Stack Agents, Andrew Lee, co-founder of Shortwave and Firebase, discusses the evolution of his Gmail-centric email client into an AI-first platform. Initially launched in 2020 with traditional improvements like better threading and search, Shortwave pivoted to agentic AI after the rise of large language models (LLMs). Early features like summarization and translation garnered hype but lacked deep utility. 

However, as models improved in 2023—especially Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5—Shortwave leaned heavily into tool-calling agents that could execute complex, multi-step tasks autonomously. Lee notes Anthropic’s lead in this area, especially in chaining tools intelligently, unlike earlier models from OpenAI. Still, challenges remain with managing large numbers of tools without breaking model reasoning. 

Looking ahead, Lee envisions AI that can take proactive actions—like responding to emails—and dynamically generate interfaces tailored to tasks in real-time. This shift could fundamentally reshape how productivity apps work, with Shortwave aiming to be at the forefront of that transformation.

Learn more from The New Stack about the latest insights of the power AI at scale:

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