About 6857 words23 min
2026-06-24
In the four years since ChatGPT debuted at the end of 2022, AI Agent has undergone a paradigm shift from a chatbox tool to a 24/7 autonomous digital worker. The industry successively produced multiple waves of capital bubbles around prompt engineers, vector databases, GPT Store, low-code Agent platforms, and Vibe Coding, while large numbers of middle-layer projects disappeared rapidly as the underlying infrastructure iterated. This article systematically traces the technical evolution of agents from Generation 0 to Generation 4, breaks down the architectural breakthroughs, industry bubbles, and fatal flaws of each generation, distills six underlying laws that run through the entire evolution, and offers an objective judgment on prospective Generation 5 technical directions and the industry's real moats.