Long-horizon agents

Facts

Lane

Agents and organisations

Wave

6 of 12 (build order, not a date)

Needs

13 boxes all the way back through hard links

Unlocks

48 boxes downstream through hard links

Leverage

None: already built

Cluster

Agents at work

When

Here since 2025

Evidence as of October 2026

METR measures the length of task an agent can finish half the time. It doubled about every 7 months from 2019 to 2024 and about every 4 months since 2023. Frontier models measured roughly 6 to 12 hours in the first half of 2026.

1. 01METR and the task time-horizon metric (Wikipedia)
2. 02Is there a half-life for the success rates of AI agents?

Watch
METR 50% time horizon: roughly 6 to 12 hours in early 2026, doubling every 4 to 7 months.

Timeline note
METR measured frontier agents finishing multi-hour tasks during 2025.

1. 01METR and the task time-horizon metric (Wikipedia)

Around it

Loops and off-ramps

• AI research automationreinforcing loop
• Learning from deploymentreinforcing loop
• Domains make the datareinforcing loop
• Capex pullbackoff-ramp · slowed
• Taiwan chip disruptionoff-ramp · slowed
• Power shortfalloff-ramp · slowed
• Capability plateauoff-ramp · slowed
• Training data ruled outoff-ramp · slowed