AGNTCon + MCPCon Japan 2026: Harness, not model, decides AI agent success

The event, held September 10–11, 2026 in Shibuya, Tokyo, was the first Japan edition of AGNTCon + MCPCon. Gilbert built his case from Artificial Analysis rankings, where frontier models such as Claude and GPT lead but open-weight models like GLM and Kimi are rapidly closing the gap. He pointed to the Jevons paradox: token prices fell more than 90% over the past year while consumption rose roughly 50-fold or more, so total spending grew even as unit costs dropped. Jones's exercise drew its force from the audience vote, in which the team received the most votes as the responsible party. Her conclusion was that only humans can bear responsibility, making own the loop — the ability to verify execution logs afterward, constrain agent actions, and change the system when needed — a prerequisite for production deployment.