The future of agentic operating systems

Shaw Walters, CTO @ Graceful Technology

The operating systems of today will not work

“Windows is evolving into an agentic OS.”

Head of Windows, November 2025

“Bro, straight up, nobody wants this.”

A reply to the Head of Windows, November 2025

“I feel like I am walking through Times Square in New York.”

Sam Altman, on today’s phones, 2025

Apple’s agent skips apps. Apple’s business is selling them.

Apple Intelligence and the App Store

Five principles of ideal agents

1

The agent always shows you what you want to see.

2

The agent controls the device and you are in the sandbox.

3

The agent always listens. It speaks only when it is its turn.

4

Your agent knows everything about you.

5

The agent is always with you.

1

The agent always shows you what you want to see

“You will never go to a search site again, you will never go to a productivity site, you’ll never go to Amazon again.”

Bill Gates, 2023

“Apps are going to disappear.”

Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing, 2026

2

The agent controls the device and you are in the sandbox

“LLMs not as a chatbot, but the kernel process of a new Operating System.”

Andrej Karpathy, 2023

3

The agent always listens. It speaks only when it is its turn.

“Technology can communicate, but doesn’t need to speak.”

Amber Case, Principles of Calm Technology

“A calm technology will move easily from the periphery of our attention, to the center, and back.”

Amber Case, Principles of Calm Technology

4

Your agent knows everything about you

“A very tiny reasoning model with a trillion tokens of context that you put your whole life into.”

Sam Altman, on the ideal model, 2025

“It will have a rich understanding of your life.”

Bill Gates, 2023

5

The agent is always with you

Instinct

An agent that you text, in iMessage

$10B valuation, September 2026

OpenAI

A pocket device with no screen

With Jony Ive, 2027

Friend

A pendant that hears your day

Version 2, July 2026

Doubao phone

ByteDance and ZTE · China · December 2025

The agent has system permissions. It operates any app through its screen.

In a few days, Alipay, Taobao and WeChat blocked it.

The Doubao phone in use: the Doubao agent looks through the camera at a children’s book

Natural AI Phone

Brain Technologies and SoftBank · Japan · April 2026

No app grid. The phone is organized around what you want to do.

It works in the background between your requests.

The Natural AI Phone: the back of the phone and the Natural OS home screen with goal cards

Omarchy

DHH · Linux · June 2025

One person’s configuration became a full operating system.

At first start, you select your AI agent. Agents wrote version 4.

The Omarchy desktop: tiled windows with code, a system monitor, a terminal and files

The first users are the people that apps fail

A child holds the green Freckle phone, with a clay character on the ClayOS screen

Kids

Freckle and ClayOS

An older woman with a coffee cup laughs next to ElliQ, a small tabletop robot with a screen

Seniors

ElliQ

What I am working on

elizaOS

One open-source agent runtime

Grace

Assistive device for seniors

Alpha

Open source agentic phone OS

Grace

Easy bill pay

Medication reminders

Appointment scheduling

Anti-scam technology

Alpha

Always listening, with redaction

End-to-end private, with confidential compute

Voice and text drive everything

Built for productivity

In partnership with

Alpha Compute

The next OS will be your OS.

Thank you

shawmakesmagic@gmail.com

@shawmakesmagic on X