The Product Podcast Zapier VP of Product on Orchestrating 800+ AI Agents to Manage Everything | Chris Geoghegan | E286
Mar 4, 2026
Chris Geoghegan, VP of Product at Zapier and the company’s first product manager, on scaling automation and running 800+ internal AI agents. He discusses agentic versus deterministic workflows. He explains orchestration, onboarding agents like employees, and Model Context Protocols. He also covers Zapier’s integrations-driven moat and how AI shifts product and enterprise priorities.
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What Makes An Agent Different From A Workflow
- Agents combine access to knowledge, the ability to act, and iterative reasoning toward outcomes.
- Chris Geoghegan defines agents as non-deterministic workers that can change course mid-task, unlike standard trigger-filter-action workflows.
Hire And Onboard Agents Like Employees
- Treat agents like employees: hire, onboard, give context, and assign clear job descriptions.
- Orchestrate them collectively and connect them to data and tools so they can act on your behalf when you're away from the keyboard.
Context Engineering Is The Core Problem
- Agents lack persistent memory between calls, so every invocation must be re-onboarded with context.
- Context engineering and providing tool access are core to making agents make good decisions repeatedly.