The big shift is that the interface is no longer a file browser. It is language. That feels small until you realize how many internal tools were basically built around old school folder logic from another era.

A small prototype can teach you a lot

If I were building this from scratch, I would start embarrassingly small. Not with a full enterprise platform. Just a tiny pipeline that indexes a private video library and lets me ask plain English questions like: “Show me the part where we discussed pricing” or “Find the clip where Ana mentioned the launch delay.”

That is enough to expose the hard stuff. Transcription quality. Chunking strategy. Timestamp alignment. Latency. Permissions. UX. All the real pain shows up fast.

// Rough shape of a retrieval pipeline
async function indexVideo(videoUrl: string) {
  const transcript = await transcribe(videoUrl)
  const chunks = chunkTranscript(transcript, { maxTokens: 300 })
  const embeddings = await embedChunks(chunks)
  await vectorDb.upsert(
    chunks.map((chunk, i) => ({
      id: `${videoUrl}:${i}`,
      text: chunk.text,
      timestamp: chunk.timestamp,
      vector: embeddings[i]
    }))
  )
}

async function searchWorkspace(query: string) {
  const qVector = await embedText(query)
  const matches = await vectorDb.search(qVector, { topK: 5 })
  return matches.map(m => ({
    snippet: m.text,
    timestamp: m.timestamp,
    source: m.id
  }))
}

The code is not the point. The point is to get to the first useful answer fast. Once that happens, the product ideas start piling up like crazy.

Why big companies are all rushing here

Google, OpenAI, and a bunch of startups are converging on the same core idea, but they are aiming at different buyers.

• Google is leaning into enterprise control

  Workspace intelligence, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, IT friendly connectors. This smells like the admin panel first, magic second approach.

• OpenAI is packaging agents as managed business tools

  The appeal is speed. Teams want something that works now, not a six month platform project.

• Startups like Shade are going vertical

  That is where I get excited. Focus on one painful workflow, like video search for creatives, and make it absurdly good.

This is the same old platform story with a fresh coat of AI paint. Whoever owns the connector layer and the workflow layer gets to sit between the user and the data. That is where the rent lives.

The part nobody likes talking about

The technical magic is real, but so are the headaches.

• Permissions are brutal

  If an agent can see everything, you have a security problem. If it can see too little, it becomes useless.

• Costs can spiral fast

  Repeated LLM calls, embeddings, re indexing, media processing. The bill can get spicy very quickly.

• Latency kills the vibe

  If search takes forever, people go back to Ctrl F, email search, and suffering.

• Auditability matters

  Enterprise buyers will ask who accessed what, why the agent answered that way, and whether it can be reviewed later.

This is why I think the winning products will not just be smart. They will be boring in the best way possible. Reliable. Logged. Permissioned. Predictable. The kind of software that makes legal and IT breathe normally.

What I would build next

If I were shipping in this space right now, I would focus on one of these:

• A React search UI for private video libraries with timestamped playback

• An email and docs summarizer that explains why it surfaced each result

• A connector dashboard with granular permissions and audit trails

• A local agent simulator for testing workflows before touching real company data

• A vertical tool for one team, like marketing, legal, or recruiting, instead of trying to do everything

That last one matters a lot. General tools are cool for demos. Vertical tools are where actual businesses are built.

The bigger picture

I keep coming back to one thought: the next generation of software will not just organize your work. It will remember your work and act on it.

That feels like a real shift in how humans interact with machines. Less clicking around, more intent. Less hunting, more doing. If we get this right, a lot of people will reclaim time from the digital swamp and spend it on actual thinking, building, maybe even living a little.

And yeah, I know the hype cycle is loud. But beneath the noise, this is one of those moments where the tooling is finally catching up to a very old human desire: just ask for what you need and get it done.

My take

I do not think the future belongs to the company with the biggest model. I think it belongs to the team that can connect intelligence to real private work without breaking trust.

That is the real opportunity here. Not a smarter chatbot. A useful layer over the stuff we already do all day.

So here is the question I keep asking myself: if your private data could finally talk back, what would you ask it first?