Build AI agents that can work for days, not minutes.

AI agents today can do remarkable things in short bursts. Give one a task it can finish in a few minutes and, increasingly, it works.

But most of the world's work doesn't happen in a few minutes.

A procurement negotiation takes three weeks. A freight shipment involves dozens of calls, emails, documents, delays, and changes before it reaches its destination. Collecting an overdue invoice can mean contacting a customer, investigating a dispute, finding missing paperwork, negotiating payment terms, waiting five days, following up, and trying again.

We believe the agents that matter most will be the ones that can do the whole job, not just the next step. We believe this is a large and inevitable transition. And we believe the infrastructure to support it does not yet exist.

We are building Shadway to be that infrastructure.

Consider procurement.

Today, you tell an agent: email these three suppliers. Then you come back tomorrow and tell it: read their responses. Then: negotiate with the cheapest two. Then: follow up with the one that hasn't responded.

That is not how the work should flow. The assignment was never to send an email. The assignment was:

Buy 50,000 units. Target $3.80 each. Never exceed $4.20. Delivery within 30 days. You may negotiate directly with approved suppliers. Ask me before agreeing to nonstandard payment terms.

That is a job. The agent should be able to take it from there.

It can request quotes. Make phone calls. Read PDFs. Negotiate. Wait overnight. Follow up. Compare offers. Ask a human for approval when it reaches the boundary of its authority. Resume afterward. Handle a supplier changing its terms. Recover when a tool fails.

And continue until the job is done.

This is what we are working to make possible.

Software is only part of the environment. People answer phones. People ignore emails. A dispatcher says one thing on a call and sends something different in writing. A vendor promises a delivery date and changes it two days later. A customer disputes an invoice. A website goes down. An approval takes six hours. A PDF contains terms nobody expected.

Long-lived agents have to operate through all of it.

With Shadway, phone calls, emails, browsers, documents, APIs, internal systems, and human decisions are all part of the same persistent task. The tools underneath can change. The job does not.

We think this matters a great deal. The world is not an API. If agents can only operate inside clean software environments, the size of the opportunity shrinks dramatically. We intend to build for the full mess.

An agent that acts on behalf of a company needs more than a prompt telling it to be careful. It needs clearly defined authority.

A freight agent might be authorized to negotiate a load up to $2,100, but not $2,101. A procurement agent might negotiate price and delivery freely, but require approval before accepting nonstandard payment terms. A collections agent might offer a 60-day payment plan, but never reduce principal.

These are not suggestions. They define what the agent is allowed to do.

Shadway lets developers define those boundaries before the work begins and enforce them through the life of the task. Inside its mandate, the agent works. At the boundary, it asks. Outside the boundary, it cannot act.

We believe this is how agents earn trust over time. Not by removing limits, but by making the limits explicit, observable, and reliable. Companies will give agents more responsibility when they can see exactly where the guardrails are.

A freight company gives an agent a load Monday morning:

Get this shipment from Philadelphia to Atlanta by Wednesday. Carrier cost cannot exceed $1,950.

The agent contacts carriers. Gets quotes. Negotiates. Books one.

Tuesday morning, the carrier cancels. The task is not over because the first plan failed.

The agent finds another carrier. The new carrier wants $2,100. That exceeds the limit. The agent keeps looking. It finds one at $1,900, confirms the pickup, monitors the shipment, handles a delay, updates the customer, obtains proof of delivery, and closes the job Thursday afternoon.

From the company's perspective, that is one piece of work. From Shadway's perspective, it is too. One objective. One set of boundaries. One continuous history. However many actions it takes. However many systems it crosses. However long it lasts.

Today, most AI usage follows a pattern: a person gives the model a single action. Write this. Search for that. Call this API. Answer this customer. Book this appointment.

We believe the more significant transition is from giving AI actions to giving AI responsibility for outcomes.

Resolve this claim. Collect this invoice. Procure these components. Get this load delivered. Negotiate this renewal. Complete this onboarding.

And don't come back after every step. Come back when you need a decision only a human can make, or when the work is done.

There is an enormous amount of work in the world that fits this description. It is long-running. It is messy. It is asynchronous. It is full of exceptions. It is spread across software and people.

The models are becoming capable enough to do more and more of it. What they lack is infrastructure that lets them keep going.

It is Day 1 for long-lived agents. We intend to be the place where they run.