Every maturing infrastructure shift follows the same curve: a scramble to ship, a period of fragile hacks, then a flip where the stack is rebuilt for scale, trust, and economics.

Here’s what’s coming next,  and where the build opportunities lie.

From DOM to Dual-Mode Agents

Browser scraping is the execution layer today because most enterprise and government workflows are still locked in portals and forms. But APIs are coming. Once airlines, banks, insurers, and marketplaces open stable, structured APIs, scraping becomes brittle overnight.

The survivors will be dual-mode agents that can toggle DOM and API in a single workflow, preserving state across modes.

Build opportunities:

• Agent runtimes with auto-introspection to select DOM or API execution.
• Embedded authentication wrappers with cached session memory.
• Agent-onboarding SDKs for platforms opening APIs.

From Scripted Chains to Policy-Learning Agents

Most agents still run on static, hand-written logic-retries, conditionals, fixed tool order. That breaks at scale. Policy-trained agents that learn optimal execution through real-world feedback will replace manual orchestration.

Build opportunities:

• AgentOS frameworks with native reward shaping.
• Run-trace logging to turn production runs into training data.
• Foundation models tuned on agent outcomes, not general text corpora.

From Generic RAG to Vertical Retrieval

RAG infra is now table stakes, and horizontal vector DBs are already embedded into foundation models. The next value layer is retrieval tuned for a specific domain, with proprietary corpora, re-ranking, and compliance baked in.

Build opportunities:

• Pre-packaged “RAG kits” for legal, medical, financial, and vernacular use cases.
• Retrieval feedback engines that self-label relevance from user actions.
• Corpus marketplaces with licensing and access controls.

From Ad-Hoc Compliance to Trust-Layer Infrastructure

Compliance is no longer a late-stage afterthought. It is becoming the gating item for enterprise deployment. Memory that can’t be audited, tool calls that aren’t logged, and retrieval without scope control will be unsellable in regulated sectors.

Build opportunities:

• Trust ops layers with TTL-enforced memory, scoped sharing, and encrypted logs.
  Policy engines that block unsafe or non-compliant calls in real time.
• SOC-2 and HIPAA-ready “compliance in a box” for agent platforms.

The Build Map

The agent stack flip is not about more clever prompting - it is about system design that anticipates the next constraints:

• Execution that adapts: Switch DOM <> API, learn policies, persist state.
• Retrieval that specialises: Domain corpora with trust baked in.
• Inference that scales: Edge-native, GPU-light, offline-capable.
• Compliance as a moat: Trust layers that close deals faster.

Boundless is backing founders who start here. If you are building the next version of the stack, we want the first call.
→ build@boundlessvc.com