# Agents will move from prompt-and-wait to asynchronous work

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/agents-will-move-from-prompt-and-wait-to-asynchronous-work/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Kevin Scott](https://realalpha.app/builders/kevin-scott/) · Kevin Scott is CTO of Microsoft. · Chief technology officer at Microsoft, previously SVP of engineering and operations at LinkedIn and VP at AdMob.
- Host: [Dan Shipper](https://realalpha.app/people/dan-shipper/) · Co-founder & CEO, Every · Sold his first startup, Firefly, to Pegasystems; writes Every's Chain of Thought.
- Show: AI & I
- Episode: [Microsoft’s Vision for an Internet Made for Agents With CTO Kevin Scott (Best of the Pod)](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/), Aug 12, 2026
- Moment: 23:55 to 27:03 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/agents-will-move-from-prompt-and-wait-to-asynchronous-work/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1435

## Quote

> “you're going to start to get to the point where you're able to go from this synchronous mode of interaction with agents **to asynchronous**.”
> — [Kevin Scott](https://realalpha.app/builders/kevin-scott/) at [25:54](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1554) · AI & I

## Takeaways

1. Agents will handle tasks that take time and several system calls.
2. Better reasoning and planning enable longer workflows.
3. Agents will integrate responses before returning results to people.

## About this segment

Kevin Scott predicts agents will move beyond prompt-and-wait tasks into longer, asynchronous workflows. They will call multiple systems, integrate results, and return when a task is ready for human action.

From “Microsoft’s Vision for an Internet Made for Agents With CTO Kevin Scott (Best of the Pod)”, Aug 12, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/)

## Transcript

From the transcript AI & I publishes with the episode.

[23:59](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1439) What are some things that are a hot topic right now or big questions that people have right now that are not going to matter in a year? And what is going to matter in a year? And what are your predictions for what we're going to be talking about? Yeah, I think people who are still like hanging on to these ideas that, oh, like the technology is not ready yet because like I, you know, I tried to do something and it was like marginally too expensive or like it was marginally capable of doing the thing that I wanted to do.

[24:30](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1470) Yeah. Like, I think anyone who is using those as excuses to wait to get started are going to be super behind because everything is going to get cheaper and everything is going to get more capable every year. I know, like, and I think this is actually not a hard sell in 2025. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was this loud chorus of like, oh, you know, the progress is going to, you know, it's about to end and like everything's going to stop and like everybody's going to be super disappointed.

[25:03](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1503) Like I... I mean, there's still some people out there saying that, but like, I don't think folks are paying much attention to them anymore. Mostly because like, you know, what do you win by paying attention to like some crank who's saying like, you know, the things about to stop, like you're sort of betting on failure and the cost of betting on failure versus betting on optimism is like a real big difference there.

[25:30](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1530) Yeah. So, yeah, like I think we're going to we're going to see a ton of progress on like the level of ambition of problems that people are tackling with agents. And then I think, you know, modalities that are going to be really different is like is this agentic web starts to get more complete, more plumbed out and the models change. reasoning and planning capability get better and better, like you're going to start to get to the point where you're able to go from this synchronous mode of interaction with agents to asynchronous.

[26:05](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1565) Like right now, most of what people do is like they sort of sit down, like they got a thing, they want to do like the issue, the prompts, like, and they wait until, you know, the thing comes back and like, you know, do something with that response. And so I think, you know, by next year, you're going to see people using these agents to like, hey, go sort this out. And like the agent a lot of time.

[26:27](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1587) It's going to go make a lot of calls out to systems, like the things that it's sort of like taking action on are going to like take a while to come back. Then they're going to like integrate all of those responses and like do something. And like that whole thing may iterate a bunch of times and then... you know, at some non-trivial amount of time later, you're going to sort of say, okay, like, here's the, here's the, here's as far as I got.

[26:49](https://realalpha.app/v/jBGo33Jkids/?t=1609) Like now it's your turn. Like go take some action now. Sounds like a future I want to be in. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Right. Um, well, Kevin, thank you so much. Uh, it was really great, really great to talk to you.