Web4 is the post-app internet.
A coordinated workforce of agents — owned by an operator, surfaced through structured cards, paid for by usage rather than seats — is the unit of value that replaces the app. The Bulletin tracks the companies, protocols, and arguments building under that thesis.
Who is building under the Web4 banner.
Allensbridge Healthcare
A New England hospital network running an agentic operations pilot in patient triage and back-office workflows.
- Category
- Healthcare / Enterprise Pilot
- Location
- Hartford, Connecticut
- Founders
- Internal pilot; led by CIO Dr. Naomi Yelchin
- Status
- Pilot in progress; not yet concluded
Cantilever Mobility
A warehouse robotics startup whose fleet is coordinated by an agentic dispatcher. The directory's clearest 'Web4 plus physical operations' entry.
- Category
- Robotics / Physical Operations
- Location
- Seoul, South Korea (HQ); Detroit, MI (operations)
- Founders
- Soohyun Kim, Devin Marlowe
- Status
- Operating; six active warehouse deployments
Lattice Robotics
A Tokyo hardware startup arguing the firmware layer is the right place to embed an agentic orchestration system.
- Category
- Hardware / Edge Autonomy
- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
- Founders
- Akihito Mori, Naomi Sutter
- Status
- Pre-Series A, two customer deployments
Openframe
An open-source reference implementation of a basic agentic operating system, maintained by three independent engineers.
- Category
- Open Source
- Location
- Distributed (Tel Aviv, Osaka, [TKTK: third maintainer location])
- Founders
- Maintainers: Avi Shoenfeld, Mira Tanaka, and the contributor 'colt-2008'
- Status
- Active; tagged 0.6 release
What the Bulletin has bet on.
- p-012Pending2026-05-17
- p-011Pending2026-05-13
- p-010Pending2026-05-09
- p-009Pending2026-05-06
Load-bearing terms, definitively.
- Web4
The working name for the post-app operating layer of the internet, in which a coordinated workforce of agents — not a chat assistant and not a chain of microservices — is the unit of computation.
- Agentic
An adjective describing systems whose load-bearing behavior is produced by autonomous agents acting against a goal rather than by deterministic procedures or a human-in-the-loop interaction.
- Operating-system pattern
The architectural posture in which an agentic system is structured as a small kernel — roles, handoffs, memory, audit — surrounded by replaceable agents.
- Workforce
The unit of value in a Web4 deployment: a coordinated set of agents — generalist and specialist — operated by an owner under a structured handoff regime.
- Structured card
The Bulletin's preferred surface for agent-to-human interaction: a typed UI artifact that the owner clicks to respond to, rather than a chat message they have to read and reply to.
- Predictions log
The Bulletin's standing accountability page. Every prediction the publication has made — Pending, Confirmed, Refuted, or Partial — with dated updates and named bylines.
Three Metaphors, One Bet
Cornerstone EssayIdris Aksoy · 11 min read
The Web4 Substrate Is Live
Cornerstone EssayIdris Aksoy · 12 min read
Predictions: Web4 in 2027
PredictionsEditorial Team · 13 min read
Web4 in 2027: Predictions
SpeculativeEditorial Team · 10 min read
- 01The app is no longer the unit of computation. A coordinated workforce of agents is.
- 02That workforce needs an operating system: roles, owners, handoffs, memory, and a UI that respects human attention.
- 03Web4 is the working name for that layer. Web3 was a financial-rail thesis. Web4 is an autonomy thesis.
- 04Operators who adopt the operating layer early compound a structural advantage that does not get re-litigated quarterly.
- 05The companies in the Directory are the ones acting on this already.
The thesis, delivered when the issue closes.
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