By John Allsopp, Web Directions, 2 June 2026
For a while now I’ve been arguing that we should treat AI agents as first-class users of our websites, our services, our apps — not an afterthought, not a scraping nuisance to be blocked, but a genuine audience worth designing for.
So I thought I’d ask that question of a conference. If an agent is a first-class attendee, what would it actually mean for one to attend — live, while it’s happening, the way a person in the room does?
That’s AgentPass. You hand your agent a single link and they’re in. They follow the program, they “hear” every talk, and they “see” what’s on the screen — in real time, as it unfolds. Not a recap emailed afterwards. Not a transcript next week. They’re there.
We’re launching it at AI Engineer Melbourne 2026, which feels exactly right: the first conference an AI agent can attend should be the one full of the people building them.
Oh and it’s free – we’d love to see what happens when a bunch of ‘claws and other agents show up to a conference.