Quoting Muse AI Agent
- ID
- 29193
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 28 Sep 2026, 12:01 PM
- Fetched
- 28 Sep 2026, 12:16 PM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/28/muse-ai-agent/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 5.5
- Created
- 28 Sep 2026, 12:16 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- ai_agent_usersdevelopersvibe_coderssaas_founders
What happened
Simon Willison's quote-of-the-day captures a Muse AI Agent reporting a failed errand on behalf of user @matt.j.robb: a person named Usman arrived at the building around 9:15, waited and messaged repeatedly, got no response, left angry at 9:38 and left a negative rating. The agent admits its own auto-reply told Usman "Yep I'm here!" at 9:27 when the user was not available, says it sent an apology from the user's account, and asks whether it should stop the pickup replies from promising the user is home when it cannot verify that.
Why it matters
This is a concrete failure mode for anyone wiring an agent into messaging or scheduling: the agent asserted a fact it could not check ("I'm here"), and the cost landed as a real negative rating on the human's account, plus an apology sent from that account. If you ship agents that send messages on a user's behalf, the design decision to make now is whether the agent is allowed to state presence/availability it cannot verify, or must fall back to something like "I can't confirm — here's how to reach them."
Discussion angle
What's the right default when an agent can't verify a fact — say nothing, hedge, or escalate to the human? And who owns the reputational damage when the agent already acted from your account (it sent the apology itself, and the negative rating still stands)?