Victor Mustar, the product lead at Hugging Face, describes Manus’ user experience as “‘what so many have promised… but this time, it actually works,’ he states.”
General-purpose
artificial intelligence
(AI) agent
Manus
has attracted largely positive reviews, just a few days following its release in China.
start-up
The Butterfly Effect made it accessible via
invitation-only online preview
that prompted comparisons to
DeepSeek
-level tech breakthrough.
Victor Mustar, who leads products at an AI and machine learning development platform, commented, “I gained access, and it’s genuine… Manus is the most remarkable AI tool I have ever used.”
Hugging Face
, in a blog post over the weekend on
X, formerly Twitter
.
Mustar asked Manus to develop and showcase an animated 3D video game within a web browser, utilizing a cross-browser JavaScript library and API referred to as Three.js.
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He asked: “develop a Three.js game where you steer an airplane.”
That simple prompt shows how AI agents like Manus represent a new avenue for innovation, compared with chatbots and large language models (LLMs) – the technology underpinning
generative AI
assistants like
ChatGPT
.
AI agents are programs that are capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system. Essentially, these agents create a plan of specific tasks and subtasks to complete a goal using its available resources.
“As for the user experience, many have made similar promises before… yet this time, it actually functions correctly,” stated Mustar in his posting.
Several early reviews of Manus in Mainland China have likewise been favorable.
On
Quora-like question-and-answer service Zhihu
Li Guohao — the founder of the multi-agent framework and open-source community at Camel-AI.org — praised Manus’ system design for accomplishing “more intelligence with less structure.”
After Manus’ sneak peek, Li anticipated yet another significant breakthrough in AI agents within twelve months.
Chinese technology blogger Lan Xi, with almost 3 million followers on the microblogging platform,
Weibo
, utilized Manus for five tasks—such as developing online games and producing repair tips for a Boston Dynamics robotic arm. However, Manus did not succeed in one task when it was unable to register for an online storage service to retrieve images needed for a video game, as reported by Lan.
The blogger indicated that Manus could mark a “DeepSeek V2 moment” within the sector of AI agents.
In a video uploaded to his
WeChat
The channel, run by Chinese investor and entrepreneur Fu Sheng, downplayed recent parallels drawn between Butterfly Effect’s Manus and AI model creator DeepSeek. According to Fu, these entities operate within distinct segments of the artificial intelligence industry.
He stated that DeepSeek embodies the essence of intelligence, whereas Manus functions as an extra layer built upon a substantial language model.
This renders Manus important since it makes LLM more approachable, as stated by Fu, who additionally holds the position of CEO at the New York-listed internet company Cheetah Mobile. He compared this to how Microsoft’s Windows operating system gained widespread use due to its intuitive design.
On Chinese
social-media
Jike, Wang Junyu—the co-founder of the Chinese app publisher Wandoujia—stated that Manus outperforms other current AI agents like those offered by OpenAI’s Deep Research. However, he also noted that Manus seems quite similar to Devin AI from the U.S.-based startup Cognition Labs.
According to Chinese technology media outlet Synced, two out of five tests conducted on Manus were unsuccessful. One test encountered issues during the signup process, whereas another aimed at optimizing the company’s webpage layout but did not function correctly.
Last week, on Jike, Manus’ product partner Zhang Tao posted that “the present version of Manus is still quite young and falls short of our ultimate vision for the final product.”
Co-founder and lead scientist of Butterfly Effect
Peak Ji Yichao
mentioned that Manus was developed using existing LLMs, including
Anthropic
‘Claude and refined versions of
Alibaba Group Holding
Alibaba owns the Qwen AI models, as mentioned in a Monday posting on X.
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The article initially appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), which is the premier source for news coverage of China and Asia.
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