Manus is hard to find a code: Is the future of AI Agent or a hype?

Today, waves have been caused in the AI ​​circle. A product called Manus quickly attracted a lot of attention with a full English promotional video and invitation code release method. This AI Agent developed by a Chinese team is officially called "the world's first universal Agent". It seems that OpenAI and Anthropic Operators were eliminated overnight. After Manus was released, it quickly triggered a "explosion" spread in a small circle, similar to the phenomenon of DeepSeek. However, can Manus really be the next DeepSeek? Let's take a closer look at it first.

What exactly is Manus?

According to Manus' promotional video and official website information, it is an AI Agent that can "solve various complex and changeable tasks, have independent thinking and system planning capabilities, flexibly call tools in a virtual environment and directly deliver complete results." These introductions are not uncommon among today's AI Agent products, and many AI products will describe themselves in this way. Manus is not publicly launched at present, and can only be used through invitation codes, and the publishing method also relies entirely on demonstration videos.

In the video demonstration, Manus showed several specific application scenarios: for example, uploading a compressed package containing multiple resumes, automatically decompressing, analyzing and providing suggestions based on prompt words; sorting out real estate information and prices based on user needs; generating an analysis report for Nvidia and Tesla's stock prices. Similar functions have been shown in several AI products such as OpenAI's Operator, Zhipu AI's Phone Use, Google Gemini, etc.

From a technical point of view, Manus did not provide a detailed technical report. Some analysts pointed out that Manus's basic capabilities may be derived from the Claude model, combined with the post-training technology of open source models, and perform tasks through a series of set workflows. The innovation is that these capabilities are encapsulated in a cloud virtual environment and provided services in an asynchronous interactive mode, although this is still a bit far from the industry's pursuit of "general AI".

The issue of "general agent"

Manus’ goal is to be a “universal AI Agent”, that is, it not only provides suggestions or answers, but it can plan and perform tasks independently. However, this definition itself is problematic. Powerful models like Claude already have the ability to handle complex tasks and can complete tasks through efficient tool calls. Therefore, these functions of Manus can be implemented essentially by a more powerful agent or a large model, without even requiring a system specially designed like Manus.

In addition, Manus's product positioning is obviously different from the traditional AI Assistant. It seems to hope to integrate different tools and agents through a "virtual environment" to make it more automated. Although doing so lowers the technical barriers for users, does this mean that Manus can become a truly universal smart agent? After all, the needs of personalized Agents are of different faces, and it is still unknown whether Manus can adapt to the needs of different scenarios.

Marketing Strategy: Hunger Marketing and Social Communication

Manus's "popularity" is not only due to technology, but its marketing strategy is also a highlight. Through the invitation code mechanism, Manus has quickly triggered a crazier in the AI ​​circle like a scarce resource, and some platforms even hyped the invitation code from 999 yuan to 50,000 yuan. This hunger marketing strategy draws on the classic model of the mobile Internet era: limited distribution, user competition, and KOL screaming review. Although this communication method can create topics and popularity, whether it can bring about continuous user growth still needs to be tested.

However, when we opened overseas tech forums and social media, the discussion about Manus was relatively deserted. This seems to indicate that although Manus is very popular in China, many people in the international market may not be impressed by its publicity. It is worth noting that Manus's release seems to rely too much on emotional marketing and wants to quickly gain attention with the emotional symbol "DeepSeek", but this may also mean that its popularity is short-term and lacks long-term core competitiveness.

Manus' product value and limitations

From the perspective of product design, Manus can be regarded as a packaging and optimization of existing Cursor-like AI products. By introducing multiple small models and agents, it simplifies the user's operation process, so that non-technical users can easily orchestrate and execute complex tasks. However, this approach is not completely innovative, and similar design concepts have appeared in many AI products, such as OpenDevin.

The advantage of Manus is that it can package these complex technologies into a more accessible product, allowing average users to use AI to handle complex tasks more directly. But its limitations are also obvious: first, Manus still relies on preset workflows, which limits its flexibility and innovation; second, its operating environment is relatively closed and can only run within the scope of specific software tools, and cannot support the operation of various software and applications like a general operating system. Therefore, there is still doubt whether Manus can truly achieve the goal of "genericity".

Future competition and development

In the Agent realm, Manus is not alone. Competitors such as Coze, Dify, etc. are also trying to create similar general agents. More importantly, with the continuous advancement of big model technology, models like Claude 3 and GPT-5 already have powerful tool calling capabilities, and the capabilities of big model in the future may directly absorb the market for Agent products. Therefore, whether Manus can stand out in this highly competitive market still faces huge challenges.

More importantly, whether Manus can find a real market positioning. Its goal is to become a "general agent", but from the current product form, it is more like an efficient AI tool platform, suitable for specific application scenarios, rather than all-round AI in the general sense. If this bottleneck cannot be broken, Manus' market growth may be limited to a narrow circle.

Conclusion

Overall, Manus is a promising AI product, especially optimized for user experience and technical packaging, but it is not a technological revolution. Its "general AI Agent" positioning is still questionable, and product design is more about repackaging under the framework of the existing technology rather than breakthrough innovation. Although it creates topics through hunger marketing and social communication, whether it can attract users for a long time depends on whether it can find unique value in a highly competitive market. If Manus can break existing limitations in the future, combining multi-agent collaboration and more efficient task execution mechanisms, it still has the opportunity to become an important player in the AI ​​field.