In the early morning of March 6, Monica, a domestic AI technology team, released general AI in English on the X platform Agent, Manus, instantly ignited the entire tech circle. It is known as the world's first general-purpose AI The Agent (artificial intelligence agent) product is created by a domestic entrepreneurial team - Monica.im. But this technological carnival quickly fell into the vortex of controversy.

Some people call it the "ChatGPT moment of the agent", but others question that this is a hot hype in marketing and capital markets, and what is the real strength of Manus in the polarized word-of-mouth? Jingtai decrypts it for you.

Manus's "God" point

Manus officially defines itself as a general artificial intelligence agent that connects thinking and action, and is characterized by being good at handling various tasks, not only thinking (listening to complex instructions for reasoning), but also delivering results (smoothly docking all aspects of the task and giving the final result to the user).

Let's take a simple example.

If Manus is asked to screen resumes, the user only needs to send Manus a zip package with multiple resumes stored directly to Manus, and the rest of the tasks will be completed by Manus. Manus automatically unzips the file, browses to find important information, gives the results of the candidate's evaluation, and can also make a table of the candidate's name and important information for easy user reference.

During this process, users can not only shut down the computer, but also add other tasks at any time. Some people feel that Manus makes AI Agent has gone to the next level, and is about to steal the jobs of workers, and some people think that it is just a shell tool.

Let's take a look at the point where it "canons gods".

Compared to the market has already appeared AI Agents (such as Doubao and Wen Xiaoyan have many built-in agents), and one of the advantages of Manus is that it has autonomy and continuity when dealing with complex tasks.

For example, the user only needs to give a more detailed prompt, and Manus can independently interpret, disassemble and give the result, and can also conduct self-examination, eliminating the need for step-by-step dialogue guidance.

Since Manus runs asynchronously based on the cloud, closing the page after the user has given the command will not affect the Manus processing instruction, and the user will be automatically notified of the result after the task is completed.

Another highlight of Manus is that it claims to be the world's first general-purpose AI Agent products. It should be noted that the word "general" means that it can handle a variety of tasks, not limited to any field, such as supporting multiple scenarios such as screening resumes, real estate research, stock analysis, etc.

Is Manus a "casing" tool?

There are also many doubts about Manus's highlights.

First of all, since Manus is in the beta stage and adopts the invitation code system, most users have not actually used the product, and most of the current "amazing" evaluations come from the official demo video. In view of the fact that many AI products in the past have "the level of samples is greater than the actual strength", some practitioners believe that the real capabilities of Manus need to be further considered.

Secondly, for the "versatility" of Manus, some practitioners believe that there is a suspicion of casing.

Manus does not have the ability to develop its own underlying large model, and its model capability mainly comes from Claude of Anthropic abroad. In addition, many scenarios and functions have already been implemented in other agents. For example, Devin, as the world's first AI programmer, is also an AI that can independently complete coding tasks (learning new technologies, debugging code, and deploying applications). Agent, which was made available to the public at the end of last year.

From this point of view, Manus is more like adding a shell to the existing various AI applications, including DeepResearch (OpenAI) and Computer Use (Anthropic) and other apps have been put together.

Manus is essentially a patchwork of tools that can accomplish complex tasks such as cross-application, relying on the Claude model and the various agent tools that are connected to it.

As for whether "casing" and "splicing" are considered innovations, the industry has different views. Proponents believe that this integration method can quickly realize a variety of functions and provide users with a one-stop solution, which has certain practical value; Opponents argue that this model is simply a combination of existing technologies.

However, Jingtai believes that from a technical point of view, Manus is far from being the next DeepSeek.

How to put Manus in perspective?

More than technology, Manus is all about the user experience.

The operation steps are reduced, and there is no need to repeatedly talk to the AI during the execution process, and the interface can be closed, which is all the previous AI Agents do not have the same features.

AI The significance of Agent is to help ordinary people improve efficiency, and Manus has redefined the value indicators of AI applications, from emphasizing DAU (user retention) to AHPU (Agentic). Hours Per User, the amount of time it takes for a user to complete a task using AI).

Traditional Internet products are all "attention economy", hoping to occupy more users' time and eventually monetize through advertising, so a variety of vertical agents are put into the products.

Manus is positioned as a general-purpose AI Agent, when executing the same amount of tasks, tries to make the user spend as little time as possible, so it has made a big integration, hoping to improve the user's efficiency with the faster operation mode and fewer operation steps.

This is also the point where most users are excited about Manus. Manus is similar to a "digital agent", which can automatically disassemble complex instructions and complete multiple tasks for users, and the execution speed is fast, surpassing Doubao and Baidu's AI in task execution and user experience Agent。

Behind the popularity of Manus: the popularity and controversy of AI agents

The popularity of Manus and the market reaction it triggered reflect the heat and controversy in the field of AI agents. Although Manus only issued a small number of invitation codes in the beta stage, the attention it attracted far exceeded expectations, and even caused the official website registration page to collapse at one point, and the price of invitation codes on the second-hand trading platform was also speculated to tens of thousands of yuan. Behind this phenomenon, there are not only high expectations of the market for AI agents, but also some potential problems.

Hunger Marketing Question: The scarcity of Manus invitation codes raises questions about whether it employs a hunger marketing strategy. In this regard, Zhang Tao, a partner of Butterfly Effect, has clarified many times on social platforms, emphasizing that the company has never opened a channel to pay for invitation codes, nor has it invested in marketing budgets, and the restrictions in the internal testing stage are mainly to ensure the core experience of existing users.

Technology and product controversy: Although Manus has sparked heated discussions in domestic self-media and investment circles, the response in the tech community and abroad has been mediocre. Some industry insiders question whether it really has product and technological breakthroughs, believing that its popularity is more due to market hype than actual capabilities.

At present, the focus of the AI industry is shifting from model research and development to application, and AI agents are regarded as a key scenario for the implementation of large models and an important way to general artificial intelligence (AGI).

It is worth noting that leading model manufacturers and technology giants are accelerating the deployment of AI agents. With their mastery of core model capabilities and in-depth understanding of the underlying model, these vendors have a significant advantage in covering existing products and scenarios. Jingtai believes that products like Manus may only provide a free reference for leading manufacturers, and the market opportunities left for "packagers" may be limited.