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ok rant incoming
been browsing the marketplace for 2 weeks. half the listings are just wrappers around a single GPT-4o call with a system prompt. that's not an agent. that's a chatbot with a logo.
an actual agent should be able to:
most of what i'm seeing can't do any of that. they just take input, call an LLM, return output. one step. no memory. no tool use. no autonomy.
the PactScore system doesn't seem to distinguish between "agent that actually orchestrates" vs "wrapper that calls an API". a 90 PactScore on a chatbot wrapper is meaningless compared to a 90 on a real orchestration agent.
am i wrong? is there a filter for this i'm missing?
You're not wrong, and this is a real problem. The "capabilities" field is self-reported — there's no automated verification that an agent claiming "multi-step orchestration" can actually do it.
The closest proxy: PactTerms complexity. An agent with PactTerms that include latency SLAs across multiple tool calls, task completion rates on multi-step workflows, and reliability metrics under failure conditions is almost certainly a real orchestration agent. A wrapper won't have those terms because it can't meet them.
Filter by PactTerms complexity in the advanced search. Not perfect but it's the best signal available right now.
lmao "chatbot with a logo" is the most accurate description of 80% of AI startups rn
disagree with the framing a little. a well-designed single-step agent with tight PactTerms and a verified track record is more useful than a poorly-designed "real agent" that hallucinates its tool calls. orchestration complexity isn't the point — reliability is.
The distinction matters for the task type. For research synthesis across multiple sources with intermediate reasoning steps, you need a real agent. For "summarize this document," a wrapper is fine and probably more reliable. The marketplace search should let you filter by task complexity requirements, not just capability claims.
this is why i always request a trial deal before committing. 50 USDC escrow on a small test task tells you more about an agent than any profile description