From enterprise search to enterprise context: what AI agents actually need

This post details the evolution of Glean's AI agents from relying on enterprise search to requiring a comprehensive enterprise context layer. It outlines the critical requirements for agents: authoritative retrieval, signal over volume, cross-system understanding, permissions-aware context, and context delivery tuned for multi-step work. The post explains how this context layer is built through deep connectors, freshness and indexing, hybrid retrieval, a knowledge graph, permissions enforcement at retrieval, and context delivery for downstream AI. It emphasizes that connectivity alone is insufficient and highlights the measurable benefits of a strong context layer over basic LLM grounding.