# PRD: Managed Agents Competitive Messaging Response

## Summary

Anthropic Managed Agents is a real competitive threat to any company positioned as generic agent infrastructure.

It is **not** a reason for ThinkWork to retreat. It is a reason for ThinkWork to get much sharper.

The mistake would be to respond with:
- feature envy,
- hosted-agent copycat messaging,
- or vague claims about being open.

The right response is to make ThinkWork's core distinction brutally clear:

**ThinkWork makes agent infrastructure easy without asking customers to give up the harness.**

That means:
- easy deployment,
- customer-owned AWS boundary,
- thread-native work system,
- portable memory contract,
- inspectable controls,
- and open architecture that does not trap customers in a single hosted session model.

## The competitive threat

Anthropic Managed Agents is strong because it compresses a painful truth into one sharp claim:

> Agent infrastructure is hard. We already solved it. Use ours.

That message lands because it speaks to real pain:
- sandboxing is hard
- long-running execution is hard
- tracing is hard
- secret handling is hard
- resumability is hard

If ThinkWork responds by saying only “we also have managed agents,” it loses.

Anthropic owns that frame.

## The trap in Anthropic's framing

The trap is not that their claim is false.

The trap is that it smuggles in a second claim:

> The easiest way to get production agent infrastructure is to hand over the harness to a vendor.

That is where ThinkWork should push back.

ThinkWork's answer should be:

**You do not need to choose between easy infrastructure and owned infrastructure.**

Or more bluntly:

**You can have a production-quality harness in five commands, inside your own AWS account, without turning your work system into a black box.**

## Core positioning response

### The winning line

**ThinkWork makes agent infrastructure easy. You still own the harness.**

### Supporting lines

- **Five commands. One AWS account. Production-grade agent infrastructure.**
- **Open infrastructure for AI work, not a black-box hosted agent API.**
- **Threads are the system of record. Memory is portable. Control stays in your boundary.**
- **Deploy fast without renting your agent runtime from a model vendor.**
- **Own the harness, not just the prompt.**

## Strategic message hierarchy

### 1. Easy, first

Do not make the buyer work to understand the value.

Lead with:
- easy setup
- fast deployment
- production-grade defaults
- minimal ops burden

This matters because Anthropic is correctly attacking the “infra is hard” pain.

ThinkWork must answer that directly.

### 2. Ownership, second

Once ease is established, land the difference:
- your AWS account
- your thread record
- your memory contract
- your controls and audit
- your deployment boundary

### 3. Portability, third

Then explain why this matters over time:
- model providers change
- backend choices change
- vendor pricing changes
- security requirements tighten
- memory and context should survive runtime changes

Portability should feel like strategic insurance, not ideological purity.

## The sharper product truth

ThinkWork is not just “managed agents on AWS.”

That undersells the product and gives Anthropic the better framing.

The stronger truth is:

**ThinkWork is an open, thread-native harness for AI work.**

Managed agents are one runtime mode inside that broader system.

The system includes:
- threads as the canonical work record
- memory as the harness-owned carry-forward layer
- connectors as system boundaries
- automations as durable execution
- control as governance, policy, and audit

That is broader and more defensible than hosted agent execution alone.

## Messaging changes to make now

## 1. Rewrite the homepage/README lead

The lead should explicitly combine ease and ownership.

Recommended direction:

- ThinkWork makes agent infrastructure easy without handing the harness to a black-box vendor.
- Five commands, one AWS account, and you own a production-grade agent runtime.
- Open infrastructure for AI work inside your own deployment boundary.

## 2. Stop sounding like generic “agent platform” copy

Avoid soft phrases like:
- production-grade agent platform
- deploy agents at scale
- enterprise agent orchestration

Those are too broad now.

Prefer:
- open agent harness
- thread-native AI work system
- customer-owned agent runtime
- portable memory contract
- deploy into your AWS account

## 3. Hit the anti-lock-in argument without sounding defensive

Do not whine about closed vendors.

Do say:
- your thread record lives in your system
- your memory is exposed through a ThinkWork contract, not a backend-specific endpoint
- your control plane is not tied to one model vendor's hosted session layer

## 4. Make “easy without surrender” a repeated theme

This is the heart of the response.

Useful phrasings:
- easy without lock-in
- easy without surrendering the harness
- easy without a SaaS control plane
- easy without black-box session state

## 5. Turn memory portability into a proof point

The new Memory API / MCP story matters here.

It proves that ThinkWork portability is not just philosophical. It is architectural.

## Comparison framing

## Anthropic Managed Agents

Strongest honest pitch:
- hosted harness convenience
- strong sandbox/security story
- observability and resumability
- Claude-optimized execution model

## ThinkWork

Strongest honest pitch:
- comparable ease for AWS-native teams
- customer-owned deployment boundary
- open harness architecture
- threads as the canonical work system
- memory portability via ThinkWork-owned contract
- model/backend/runtime flexibility over time

## The blunt comparison line

**Anthropic manages agents for Claude. ThinkWork lets you own the harness for AI work.**

## Homepage / hero copy directions

### Option A

**Open agent infrastructure, minus the infrastructure headache.**

Deploy ThinkWork in five commands and own a production-grade harness for AI work inside your AWS account.

### Option B

**Agent infrastructure made easy, not opaque.**

Threads run the work, memory carries it forward, control keeps it safe, and the whole harness lives in your AWS account.

### Option C

**Don’t rent your agent runtime.**

ThinkWork gives you production-grade managed agents, threads, memory, and control without a black-box SaaS control plane.

## Short comparison page outline

## Title

ThinkWork vs hosted managed agents

## Sections

### 1. The real tradeoff
Hosted convenience vs owned harness

### 2. What hosted managed agents get right
Infra is hard, tracing matters, security boundaries matter

### 3. Where ThinkWork differs
Easy deployment plus ownership of threads, memory, control, and infra boundary

### 4. Why ownership matters
Portability, compliance, procurement, vendor leverage, system continuity

### 5. Who should choose what
- choose hosted managed agents when you want fastest vendor-native start and accept the tradeoff
- choose ThinkWork when AI work is becoming operational infrastructure and you want to own it

## Phrases to use more

- open harness
- own the harness
- customer-owned runtime
- deploy into your AWS account
- thread-native work system
- portable memory contract
- easy agent infrastructure
- no SaaS control plane
- production-grade in five commands

## Phrases to use less

- agent platform
- orchestration layer
- knowledge module
- enterprise AI workflows
- deploy agents at scale
- managed service abstractions

## Product proof points that should back the messaging

The messaging only works if product surfaces support it.

Priority proof points:
- five-command CLI path in docs and homepage
- Memory API / MCP contract
- better security docs for secrets, sandboxes, and connector auth boundaries
- inspectability surfaces for memory, thread history, and runtime actions
- clear docs language that managed does not mean vendor-hosted

## Bottom line

Anthropic's launch does not kill ThinkWork.

It kills lazy messaging.

ThinkWork should respond by sharpening one idea until it is impossible to miss:

**ThinkWork makes agent infrastructure easy, while keeping the harness open, portable, and inside the customer's control boundary.**
