--- title: Why I built Agent J — an open letter to all our users nav: Why I built summary: An open letter to everyone using Agent J: how it began, the challenges today, and what comes next. order: 48 nav_order: 0.5 --- # Why I built Agent J — an open letter to all our users Agent J didn't begin in a brainstorming session. It was a powerful tool I used every day. Only when friends wanted to use it did I turn it into a product. To explain how that happened, I need to start with the way I work. ## It started with a one-person channel I built the [MacroAlpha](https://macroalpha.io) channel with Agent J. I wanted to turn what I had learned about working with AI into a product that more people could use. Using a browser as a remote control is the practical part of that idea. It first solved a problem I had while travelling: in places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, I couldn't use Claude Code or Codex directly and had to use a VPN. That put my accounts at risk, and the longer the trip, the greater the risk. Meanwhile, my main work computer was always running a lot of automations in the background. I couldn't carry it from meeting to meeting, and I didn't want to interrupt those processes. So I had an idea: leave the computer at home and use a browser as the remote. ## From twenty-plus workflows to a chairman's assistant The other starting point was management. I think of the human as the chairman and the AI as the CEO of a virtual company. Each workflow is a company. The chairman manages the CEO, and the CEO figures out how to run the work. That worked well with one or two workflows. But once I had more than twenty, I ran out of bandwidth. So I added a chairman's assistant—Agent J—to manage those twenty-plus virtual CEOs. Instead of watching a dozen conversations at once, I could go back to talking to just one assistant. After using it for a while, I found this approach worked extremely well. My spoken instructions are often fragmented and incomplete. Agent J turns them into clear, professional briefs for the right CEOs and follows through until the work is done. That's where the product came from: years of experience and thinking about how to work with AI, distilled into something others can use. It used to be my internal tool; now it's a product. ## The real challenge: installation and initial setup When I was the only user, installation and the environment weren't a problem. I have an engineering background, and I taught myself programming during the pandemic. But when friends wanted to use it, I began turning it into a product, installing it for them one computer at a time and improving it along the way. About fifteen days after launch, we had already shipped more than thirty iterations. Half of that work went into installation, initial setup, and fixing disconnections. An engineer thinks little of typing a few terminal commands. Many people don't even know where to find the terminal. So this is what I want Agent J to make possible: install it once, then leave the host computer in a corner. If it's a laptop, close the lid and leave it alone. Everything should happen through the remote, including terminal operations. In the latest version, you can tap a common command in the remote's settings, run it in the host computer's terminal, and get the result back on the remote. The next version will put a web terminal directly inside the remote. Installation is only the first step. The real setup means signing into all the services you use in a browser that the AI can control. Many third-party services in mainland China have no API, so automating a workflow means doing most of it through the browser. Configuring that browser, applying for third-party API access, and adding those keys to Agent J's key card still leave many people stuck. That's the problem I most want to solve next. ## The swordsmanship manual, rather than the sword Agent J doesn't come with a complete Harness that runs independently, as OpenCode does. We rely on the model providers' own Harnesses, or an open Harness such as OpenCode. We add a tunnel on top, turning the browser on any device into a remote control so you can comfortably direct work on your host computer. If model providers sell the swords, we sell the swordsmanship manual. A sword comes with instructions, but each maker teaches its own techniques, tied to its own blade. People want to learn more ways to use one. ## Chinese models Mainland Chinese users face another barrier: official ChatGPT and Claude accounts are hard to obtain, and intermediary accounts are unreliable. Those upstream accounts are shared, so the five-hour usage limit can kick in almost immediately. The experience is terrible. That's why I connected three major Chinese model platforms: Kimi, Volcano Ark, and Qwen through Alibaba Bailian. With OpenCode connecting to Chinese models underneath and Agent J providing the remote on top, the system can run directly in mainland China. Honestly, I rarely used Chinese models before, because living overseas made it easy to use the two leading American providers. But while adapting the product for more mainland users, I've tested many Chinese models. They've improved enormously—much more than I expected. I think it's a matter of time. I live in Japan now. Japan was once the world's electronics centre, the place you came to find the best products. Today, I can barely find anything new and exciting here, especially for Vibe Coding. Electric cars tell a similar story. People once thought poorly of BYD as a brand. Now, buying a Chinese electric car no longer makes anyone feel they're settling for less. Chinese manufacturing is building its own brands, step by step. I think large language models will follow the same path. As Chinese models improve and more people choose them, VPNs and intermediary accounts will stop being a problem. We're laying the groundwork now so that, when that day comes, our orchestration technology, the browser remote, and the idea of an AI chairman's assistant managing dozens or hundreds of automations and workflows will already have a place. ## What comes next We've already built our own underlying Harness. With it, Agent J won't need to depend on a third-party application. It can become a standalone app with a one-click install, like the other apps on your phone and computer. This is how I work every day: lying on the sofa, watching television, and using my phone browser to assign tasks to my chairman's assistant and watch it supervise the work in the background. Agent J itself was built by Agent J. I hope it can become your chairman's assistant too. — Leo (Wang Lijie) 2026-10-18