Agents are now picking the vendor: Jason Lemkin's build hit 448 open tasks and his agents refused everything but Clay

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In his 20VC recap Lemkin reports a Replit build accumulated 448 open items in its task queue, forcing Linear adoption to track agent-generated work, an overhead category he had previously skipped. His agents refused to use anything but Clay for initial enrichment, changing the purchasing decision. He also notes conflicting guardrails produce unpredictable agent choices (a $100 spend cap losing to a 'theater matters most' rule and buying $5,000 tickets), Cognition raising at $46B on $800-900M ARR, and Iconiq data showing companies growing over 100% grew headcount 133%.