Today, there is a stir in the AI community. A product called Manus quickly attracted a lot of attention with an all-English promotional video and an invitation code system. This AI agent developed by a Chinese team is officially called "the world's first universal agent". It seems that overnight, all the operators of OpenAI and Anthropic have been eliminated. After the release of Manus, it quickly caused an "explosive" spread in a small circle, similar to the DeepSeek phenomenon. However, can Manus really become the next DeepSeek? Let's take a deeper look at it first.
What exactly is Manus?
According to Manus's promotional video and official website, it is an AI agent that can "solve various complex and changeable tasks, has independent thinking and system planning capabilities, can flexibly call tools in a virtual environment and directly deliver complete results." These descriptions are not uncommon in today's AI agent products, and many AI products describe themselves in this way. Manus is not currently publicly available and can only be used through invitation codes. The release method also relies entirely on demonstration videos.
In the video demonstration, Manus demonstrated several specific application scenarios: for example, uploading a compressed package containing multiple resumes, automatically decompressing, analyzing and providing suggestions according to the prompt words; sorting out real estate information and prices according to user needs; and generating analysis reports on Nvidia and Tesla stock prices. Similar functions have already been demonstrated by multiple AI products such as OpenAI's Operator, Zhipu AI's Phone Use, and Google Gemini.
From a technical perspective, Manus did not provide a detailed technical report. Some analysts pointed out that Manus's basic capabilities may come from the Claude model, combined with the post-training technology of the open source model, and perform tasks through a series of set workflows. Its innovation lies in encapsulating these capabilities in a cloud virtual environment and providing services in an asynchronous interactive mode, although this is still a certain distance from the industry's pursuit of the "general AI" goal.
The Problem with “Universal Agents”
Manus aims to be a "general AI agent", that is, it does not just provide advice or answers, but can autonomously plan and execute tasks. 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 features of Manus can essentially be achieved by more powerful agents or large models, and do not even require a specially designed system like Manus.
In addition, Manus's product positioning is obviously different from traditional AI Assistants. It seems to want to integrate different tools and agents through a "virtual environment" to make it more automated. Although this lowers the technical threshold for users, does it mean that Manus can become a truly universal intelligent agent? After all, the needs for personalized agents are different for different people, and whether Manus can adapt to the needs of different scenarios is still an unknown.
Marketing strategy: hunger marketing and social communication
The popularity of Manus is not only due to its technology, but also its marketing strategy. Through the invitation code mechanism, Manus quickly triggered a frenzy in the AI circle like a scarce resource, and some platforms even hyped up the invitation code to between 999 yuan and 50,000 yuan. This hunger marketing strategy draws on the classic model of the mobile Internet era: limited distribution, user competition, and KOL screaming reviews. Although this communication method can create topics and heat, whether it can bring about sustained user growth remains to be tested.
However, when we open overseas technology forums and social media, the discussion about Manus is relatively quiet. 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 the release of Manus seems to rely too much on emotional marketing, hoping to quickly gain attention by using the emotional symbol "DeepSeek", but this may also mean that its popularity is short-term and lacks long-term core competitiveness.
Manus's product value and limitations
From a product design perspective, Manus can be seen as a packaging and optimization of existing Cursor-type AI products. It simplifies the user's operation process by introducing multiple small models and agents, allowing non-technical users to 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 user-friendly product, allowing ordinary 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 a specific range of software tools. It cannot support the operation of various software and applications like a general operating system. Therefore, whether Manus can truly achieve the goal of "universality" remains in doubt.
Future competition and development
In the agent field, Manus is not fighting alone. Competitors such as Coze and Dify are also trying to build similar general agents. More importantly, with the continuous advancement of large model technology, models such as Claude 3 and GPT-5 already have powerful tool calling capabilities. In the future, the capabilities of large models may directly swallow up the market of agent products. Therefore, whether Manus can stand out in this highly competitive market still faces huge challenges.
The more critical point is whether Manus can find its true market position. Its goal is to become a "universal agent", but from the current product form, it is more like an efficient AI tool platform suitable for specific application scenarios, rather than an all-round AI in the general sense. If it cannot break through this bottleneck, Manus's market growth may be limited to a relatively narrow circle.
Conclusion
In general, Manus is a potential AI product, especially in terms of user experience and technical packaging, but it is not a technological revolution. Its positioning as a "general AI agent" is still questionable, and the product design is more of a repackaging within the existing technical framework rather than a breakthrough innovation. Although it has created 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 the highly competitive market. If Manus can break through the existing limitations in the future, combined with multi-agent collaboration and a more efficient task execution mechanism, it still has the opportunity to become an important player in the field of AI.
