On this day in 1858, Hyman Lipman patented the first pencil with an attached eraser.
Here is your 2-minute crash course on a concept currently transforming 2026: Agentic Workflows.
The Topic: Agentic Workflows
In 2024 and 2025, AI was mostly a "chatbot"—you asked a question, it gave an answer (like a pencil without an eraser; you had to do the correcting and connecting yourself). In 2026, we have moved into the era of Agents.
1. What is it?
Instead of a single prompt-and-response, an Agentic Workflow allows the AI to:
Iterate: It writes a draft, critiques its own work, and fixes it before you ever see it.
Use Tools: It can "pick up" other software (like your Workflowy or ActiveWords) to execute tasks.
Plan: It breaks a big goal (e.g., "Plan my next blog series") into small steps and executes them in order.
2. Why it matters today
We are currently seeing a shift where AI is no longer just "generating text"; it is "performing labor."
The "Eraser" Analogy: Just as Lipman realized a pencil is better if it can also correct itself, developers realized AI is better if it has a "reflection" loop built-in.
Current Trend: As of March 2026, companies are moving away from "AI Assistants" and toward "AI Coworkers" that handle end-to-end processes without constant hand-holding.
3. A Fun Historical Parallel
When the pencil-eraser was patented, some teachers actually opposed it, fearing it would encourage students to be careless because they could just "undo" their mistakes. We see the same debate today with AI agents—does "undoing" the hard work of planning make us less sharp, or just more efficient?
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