The Two Zoom Levels of Agents

Building @Tonkotsu has taught us many lessons in product design, with both the underlying technology and user behavior shifting rapidly.

One of the hardest but most critical lessons we’ve learned is about calibrating the zoom level — how close or far the user feels from the work. You can see examples of this play out across the industry:

• Codex gets flak for going “heads-down” for too long compared to Claude. Users feel too zoomed out from the work.

• By contrast, Cursor and IDEs are starting to feel too zoomed in. When the majority of code is written by agents, an editor-first UI is a misfit.

We've had zoom level mismatches with Tonkotsu as well, and when we dug into it, the usage data was contradictory, suggesting that users wanted us to both zoom in and zoom out. We scratched our heads a bit at this seeming contradiction, but it clicked when viewed through a management frame: managers delegate at a high level but want updates at a fine-grained level.

The key lesson: there are two different zoom levels that agent builders need to intentionally design for. Actions need to be coarse enough that the user can be efficient and productive. But observations need to be fine-grained enough that the user is confident that progress is being made.

More here → https://blog.tonkotsu.ai/p/the-two-zoom-levels-of-agents

I'm curious what you are seeing play out in your experience, as either users or builders of agents? What products feel too close vs too far vs just right?