Han Xiao (@hxiao) “seeing a pattern shift in how I use agents for long-horizon tasks in 2026 vs. ho” — TopicDigg

seeing a pattern shift in how I use agents for long-horizon tasks in 2026 vs. how i do deep research in 2025. 2025's DR: search → read → reason → repeat until done. Everything hits the web on every loop. but 2026 long-horizon tasks have two distinct phases. - Phase 1: Web IO for research & planning. Search, read, reason. but the goal isn't to produce an answer directly. It's to materialize web knowledge into local files (.md/.json/.csv). - Phase 2: Agent "mounts" the files and starts the loop. The agent reads, runs, writes against those local files only. No more web calls for grounding. Why I cut web grounding IO in Phase 2? • Determinism: local files are immutable snapshots. Web content shifts, 404s, hits paywalls • Speed: filesystem reads are ms, web fetches are seconds. Agent loops need tight iteration • Consistency: cross-checking requires operating on the same knowledge base, not fetching different versions each time • Cost: web IO burns tokens parsing HTML noise. Local files are already clean