Generalist Super AI Agent—or Several Specialist AI Agents?
Where are you betting your hard-earned CX chips?
By Dickey Singh, Cast.app

This article is the first in a two-part series. The second article can be found here: How open Agent Protocols (MCP, MCP Proxy Bridge, ACP, A2A, A2H/H2A) future-proof your stack.

Listen to the audiogram that complements this article for a more immersive understanding.

Executive Summary

AI agents have matured. They no longer just handle tickets, lookup FAQs, book meetings, or handle singular tasks—they can now handle complex business processes, and in the world of CX, drive onboarding, adoption, renewals, expansion, and full-lifecycle success at scale.

AI agents did not leap from FAQ chatbots to full-fledged operators overnight. Instead, they have matured through three stages—single-task, role-based, and process-owning—each adding coordination and business impact.

The Table Stakes
Agent Stage What It Does & Why It Matters Exec Takeaway
Single-Task Agents A website chatbot that answers FAQs—one function, one purpose.

Zero coordination with other systems.

Quick to deploy, limited impact.
Low impact, low cost — not enterprise-grade.
Role-Based Agents Agents mimic a single human role (AI Support Rep, AI SDR, AI AE).

Great until customer needs cross boundaries.

Still operates inside its own silo.
Works in a silo, still fragments CX.
Process-Owning Agents Agents own entire business outcomes.

AI Customer Success and Account Manager agents manage the full customer lifecycle—pre-boarding, onboarding, adoption, renewals, education, upsells, cross-sells, and outcome tracking.
Owns full outcomes—where ROI gets real.

The Challenge: Super Agent vs. Specialist Agents

We’ve all been there—stuck repeating ourselves as we’re passed from one support rep to another.

Customers don’t actually mind being transferred to an expert. What frustrates them is having to re-explain the issue every single time.

That’s why they crave a single, knowledgeable helper—not because one person (or agent) can do it all, but because context is rarely preserved.

So if a single superhuman can’t solve every problem, how do we coordinate multiple intelligent agents—without creating chaos?

Should we rely on an all-knowing Super Agent that handles everything?

Or orchestrate a team of Specialist Agents that work in sync?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Both approaches have real benefits—and real trade-offs. This post unpacks the difference and where the future is headed.
The coordination problem exists with AI agents too. A “super agent” tries to do everything in one brain. A team of specialist agents, however, needs clear protocols to pass context—just like great human teams do.

Approaches to Agent Design
Approach Philosophy & Executive Takeaway Example Strength Limitation
Super Agent One powerful agent learns to handle everything.

A single agent keeps learning until it can do everything.
OpenAI Operator: “Buy groceries, update LinkedIn, book travel.” ✅ Faster to market – Single agent, one interface, easier deployment ❌ Harder to scale across domains or optimize for specialization
Specialist Agents (MAM) Multiple focused agents coordinate through clear protocols.

Specialized agents coordinate via protocols—each one reasons, acts, and learns within its domain.
Anthropic multi-agent research, Microsoft AutoGen, ReAct ✅ More sustainable – Modular, maintainable, domain-optimized ❌ Needs robust coordination (protocols, task routing, shared memory, etc.)

Real-World: Two Schools of Thought

Two schools of thought

Generalist Super Agent

OpenAI Operator — “Buy groceries, update LinkedIn, book travel.” A single agent handles diverse tasks through one conversational interface.

xAI’s Grok — Designed to be an all-in-one interface for knowledge, planning, and execution across Tesla, X, SpaceX, and beyond.

Rewind.ai — Captures your full digital life—emails, docs, calls, meetings—and lets one agent answer questions across it all.

Inflection AI’s Pi — A generalist AI agent optimized for empathetic conversation, guidance, and broad-scope reasoning.  Sold to Microsoft.

Rabbit R1 — A device-first generalist agent that operates apps on your behalf via “Large Action Model” (LAM); designed for task execution through a unified interface.

Humane Pin — Sold to HPE

OpenAI io Products — likely Super Agent.

Specialist Collaborating Agents

Anthropic Claude Research — Investigating collaborative multi-agent systems that reason and act together.

Microsoft AutoGen — A multi-agent orchestration framework where planners, coders, testers, and critics coordinate to solve complex tasks.

ReAct — A prompting framework where a single model alternates between reasoning and taking tool-based actions, simulating agent collaboration.

DeepMind’s Gemini Agents — Distributed agentic subsystems for perception, reasoning, and memory, working in tandem to solve tasks. Masked by a singular interface.

LangChain Agents — Enables modular agents to route tasks across tools and APIs, forming the foundation for modern RAG pipelines.

BabyAGI — Early proof-of-concept where an agent autonomously creates and manages task-specific sub-agents on the fly.

My call: "skip the extremes"

Skip the extremes between generalist-only or specialist-only agentic models.

Most enterprises win with a hybrid—one (or a few) powerful generalists supported by focused domain specialists, all wired together through open protocols.

Think “AI CSM” steering the customer lifecycle while Feedback and Support agents handle surveys and Tier-1 FAQs automatically. Everything hands off cleanly because the agents share a common language.

One Agent. One Domain. One Result.

Here's a practical framework:

  1. Internalize simple static content, similar to a super-agent, (rag-less)
  2. Internalize account specific content, similar to a super-agent, (rag-less)
  3. Implement ability to unlearn for internalized content, when journey stage changes, for example, onboarding completed
  4. Enable API (toolset) calling, similar to specialist agents, (RAG database per contact for every customer account)

One expert agent per business discipline, connected by open protocols.

  • AI CSM (super-agent + api calling) — Drives entire customer-lifecycle including onboarding, adoption, expansion, and renewals.
  • AI Feedback Agent — Runs voice-of-customer programs, tags insights.
  • Support Agents → Handle L1 FAQs and L2 escalations, seamlessly.

Key Principles

  • Domain depth — each agent owns one discipline and its KPI only.
  • Clear hand-offs — CSM→Feedback, CSM→L1 FAQ-base Support, L1→L2 SLA.
  • Future-proof — need onboarding? clone an agent; contracts stay intact.

Why this matters now

  • 95% of CX work is automatable when agents coordinate, not just coexist.
  • Revenue scales, headcount doesn’t—freeing people for the moments that truly need a human touch.
  • Integration debt disappears once agents speak open standards (more on that in the next post).

ready to automate your success too?