There has been much recent interest in the idea of "intelligent interface agent" software. An intelligent agent is software that can take independent actions in the interface on behalf of a user's goals, without explicit intervention by the user. Examples of such agents include Apple's hypothetical "knowledge navigator" [Apple 89], programming by demonstration systems [Cypher 93], mail and news filtering agents [Kozierok and Maes 93], and others.
In most agent experiments to date, it has been necessary to implement the application in whose domain the agent operates from scratch, in order to enable the necessary application-agent communication. We would like to be able to "attach" an agent to a application that has been written more-or-less conventionally, or at least be able to tell an application developer what the agent may require. This paper explores the relation between agent software and more traditional applications whose interface is intended to be operated by a human user rather than a program.
Unpublished Draft: Comments and suggestions for publication welcome