Understanding The Cognitive Stack: Why Your AI Strategy Is Focused On The Wrong Layer
Citrix, Wednesday, February 25th, 2026
2025 was often declared as 'the year of the agent,' and it seemed like every vendor, analyst, and keynote talked about them. So I thought it was interesting that once I started using AI to manage a second brain, I stopped thinking about agents entirely.
My AI still fires them up constantly. It loves them! But from my perspective, I just interact with the brain part of my AI. If my AI needs to spawn an agent to go do something, it does. (Invisibly and in the background.) So it's not that agents disappeared, but rather that they became infrastructure.