Everything auxfirst publishes openly — the manifesto, the principles, the heuristics, the pattern library, the open-source TrustKit, the dispatches, and the knowledge base. Definitions are CC BY 4.0. Executable tooling is MIT. No vendor wall, no "request a demo." Take what is useful.
The arguments under everything else. Why agentic UX is a discipline, not a feature. The eight beliefs we test every design decision against. The ten heuristics for evaluating agents the way Nielsen evaluated forms. Read these once a quarter.
The one-page argument — why software with memory, initiative, and judgment is not a tool but a collaborator, and why that rewires the whole UX discipline.
Read on the home page → 8 PrinciplesTapered transparency, two-way prompting, clarify before commit, pushback as professional, multimodal for the moment, loop in experts, context as memory, personalisation as moat.
Read the principles → 10 HeuristicsThe AUX answer to Nielsen Norman's classic usability heuristics — reimagined for agents. Optimised for quality of relationship, not clarity of screen.
Read the heuristics →The reference library — every concept, pattern, and platform with its own page. The knowledge base is the dictionary. The pattern library is the grammar. The agent-native platforms list is the inventory. Use these when you are auditing, briefing, or arguing.
Agent Experience, Agentic User Experience, AI UX and agent-first design are four different design problems with four different owners. The comparison table, a worked example, and a decision tree that tells you which one you actually have.
Compare the four terms → ReferenceEvery AUX concept, pillar, and supporting term — defined, contextualised, and cross-linked. The auxfirst dictionary, organised as a navigable cluster.
Open the knowledge base → PatternsThe six foundational interaction patterns — Intent Handshake, Confidence Cues, Adaptive Canvas, Escape Hatch, Memory in Motion, Generative Momentum — with the contracts they imply.
Browse the patterns → Pillar Guide · Section 01The master pillar guide — the discipline of building products where AI agents are primary actors and humans supervise. Process, patterns, autonomy spectrum, checklist, mistakes.
Read the pillar → Pillar Guide · Section 03The complete catalog of 24 patterns across four families — trust, control, memory, orchestration. The agentic equivalent of the form, the table, and the modal.
Open the catalog → InventoryThe working register of platforms designed natively for agents — not retrofits. Sortable, comparable, updated as the category settles.
Browse the register → Reference Index16 hosted agent platforms across AI, cloud, data, and developer infrastructure — benchmarked against Claude Managed Agents. Direct links to the right docs, not just homepages.
Open the index → GlossaryThe shared vocabulary of the agentic era — terms, clusters, and the language buyers and builders need to actually mean the same thing on Monday.
Open the glossary →The newsletter — long-form arguments from the agentic frontier. Where AGT sits relative to AUX. The agent-first API. The family office case. Each piece earns its place by changing how a reader thinks about an agent the next time they see one.
The full archive — agentic UX, agent-first design, AX, ad tech, family offices, and the comparisons that name the seams between disciplines.
Open the archive → SubstackThe same essays delivered as they ship. Roughly monthly. No marketing emails, no productised funnels — just the next argument.
Subscribe ↗Frameworks without schemas are think-pieces. The canon ships as runnable, citable, forkable artefacts — TrustKit on GitHub, the Trust Canvas on Figma. Definitions in YAML. Tooling under MIT. No vendor wall.
Heuristics, trust architecture, trust-gap taxonomy, agent specs, memory policies — all as YAML schemas. Forkable, citable, no vendor lock-in.
Open the repo ↗ auxfirst.com · Free toolOpen an AGENTS.md, llms.txt, brand.md or any Markdown file in the browser. Rendered and source views, a generated outline, and export to PDF, HTML or plain text. Client-side only — nothing is uploaded.
Twelve structural checks on an AGENTS.md, llms.txt or brand.md — missing boundaries, vague directives, instruction-shaped content, third-party links. Client-side only; nothing is uploaded.
A one-page artefact for mapping an agent's trust topology — autonomy boundaries, handoffs, patterns per moment. Lean Canvas, for AUX.
Open in Figma ↗ agentoperability.com · Free ebookThe agent operability field guide: the three-layer model, the Action Heat Ladder, the Agent Identity Card, the 90-day path, and the scored 42-item self-assessment. Read online or download — no email wall.
Read the field guide ↗ Field guide · NewWhy enterprise agent pilots stall between demo and adoption — Geoffrey Moore's chasm mapped onto your org chart, and the five-layer whole product that carries adoption across. Free, 11 chapters, no email wall.
Read the guide → Field guide · NewFrom prompt to accountable system. The agentic successor to SDLC, CI/CD, GitOps, CMDB, SBOM and SLOs — nine parts, ten maps of an agent estate, an artifact index, and a 24-question readiness check that runs in your browser. Free, no email wall.
Read the guide →auxfirst is the agency for the agentic era. We design AI systems that remember, adapt, and earn trust — Blueprint Sprints, Agent Experience Audits, Advisory Retainers. If the canon answered a question, the engagements answer the next one.