What Is Manus AI? How to Build a Similar AI Agent for Your Business

Manus AI is transforming how businesses approach work automation. Developed by Monica, a Chinese AI startup, Manus AI officially launched on March 6, 2025, and quickly grabbed attention from startups and enterprises alike.

Manus AI is an autonomous AI agent designed to execute complete tasks that would normally take hours of human effort. From generating investor reports and reviewing legal contracts to building interactive dashboards and summarizing complex research, Manus AI runs entire workflows on its own. Its performance backs the hype, too. 

On the GAIA benchmark, Manus AI scored 86.5% on basic tasks, 70.1% on intermediate tasks, and 57.7% on complex workflows, outperforming OpenAI Deep Research across all levels.

In this blog, we’ll break down what Manus AI is and show you how to build a similar AI agent for your business, step by step.

What is Manus AI? 

Manus AI is an AI agent platform that will automate multiple business-level tasks. It is a combination of large language models, workflow automation, and integrations of tools to assist businesses in planning, reasoning, and taking action with little human involvement.

In contrast to simple chatbots, Manus AI can break down objectives, determine the appropriate actions, utilize APIs or software applications, and change according to outcomes. This is why it can be applied by enterprises that seek to automate processes, enhance productivity, and develop their own AI agents to support real-world business processes.

How Manus AI Works?

Manus AI works like a smart digital worker that understands goals, breaks them into tasks, uses multiple AI tools together, and delivers results with minimal human involvement.

1. Goal Understanding: Manus AI starts by understanding the user’s objective in plain language. It identifies what success looks like, the constraints involved, and the expected output before taking action.

2. Task Breakdown: Once the goal is clear, Manus AI breaks it into smaller, manageable tasks. This step-by-step planning helps the agent work systematically instead of trying to solve everything at once.

3. Tool Selection & Execution: Manus AI selects the right AI models, APIs, or software tools for each task. It then executes actions like researching, coding, analyzing data, or generating content automatically.

4. Continuous Monitoring: While working, Manus AI monitors progress in real time. If something fails or needs adjustment, it corrects the approach without waiting for manual input.

5. Result Delivery & Learning: After completing tasks, Manus AI delivers the final output. It also learns from feedback and past actions to improve accuracy and efficiency in future workflows.

Benefits of Manus AI for Businesses

Manus AI assists companies to automate and stream operations, create smarter products more quickly, and make more effective decisions. Its agent-based model enhances efficiency, saves money and aligns technical teams with business objectives.

• Quick Product Development and Implementation: Manus AI replaces human-executed monotonous processes, such as data processing, testing, and workflows, enabling their development teams to focus on the essential functionality and deliver products sooner without lowering the quality.

• Reduced Operational Costs: Through the implementation of AI-based automation as a substitute for manual labor, businesses will be able to reduce staffing costs, reduce errors, and optimize resource allocation by department and massive operations.

• Better Decisions with AI Intelligence: Manus AI is an AI-based platform that processes high volumes of data in real-time, finds trends, and delivers insights that can be acted on by leaders, helping them make better decisions using data instead of assumptions.

• Improved Cooperation of Dev and Business Teams: Manus AI helps close the divide between non-technical and technical teams through the translation of business objectives into automated processes, so that all parties remain on track during both the development and the implementation of the processes.

How to Develop an Agent like Manus AI?

Developing an agent like Manus AI means building an autonomous system that plans, reasons, and executes complex tasks without constant human guidance, from research to automation to decision-making.

Step 1: Define the Agent’s Purpose and Scope

Start by identifying the specific tasks the AI agent will handle. Will it support customer operations? Automate internal workflows? Act as a research assistant? Manus AI, for instance, is engineered to perform structured, high-context tasks like business research, market summarization, or internal knowledge retrieval across teams.

Define:

• Who will use the AI agent (technical/non-technical staff, customers, analysts)

• The end goals (e.g., faster decision-making, query resolution, content generation)

• The data sources it should connect with (CRM, knowledge bases, proprietary datasets)

This foundational clarity shapes architectural decisions in later stages.

Step 2: Choose Core Models and Technologies

Determine which underlying AI models and tech stack the agent will use. Manus, for example, orchestrates multiple language models such as Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Qwen to handle diverse tasks like research, web browsing, coding, and data analysis.

Define:

• Primary language models (LLMs like GPT, Claude, Qwen)

• Supplemental models for vision, speech, or reasoning, if needed

• Tooling & SDKs to support action execution (e.g., APIs, browser automation tools)

Step 3: Design Agent Architecture and Workflow Loop

Create a system that lets the agent perceive, plan, execute, and adapt. Manus employs a multi-agent architecture with specialized sub-agents (Planner, Execution, Knowledge, Verification) that break down and manage tasks independently.

Key Design Elements:

• Planner module- translates high-level goals into step-by-step plans

• Execution layer- carries out actions (web navigation, calling APIs)

• Memory and context store- tracks history and preferences

• Verifier/feedback loop- checks results, corrects errors, refines actions

Step 4: Integrate Tools and Data Sources

Connect your agent with external tools and systems needed to complete tasks. This could include web browsers, databases, internal knowledge bases, CRMs, file systems, or workflow tools.

Must-haves:

• API connectors for reliable access to data

• Web automation drivers (e.g., Puppeteer, Selenium)

• Persistence layers (e.g., vector databases for long-term memory)

Step 5: Implement Autonomy and Decision Logic

Unlike chatbots that wait for prompts, autonomous agents decide workflow steps on their own. Build decision-making using planning algorithms, scoring systems, or reinforcement learning guides. Include fallback rules for unpredictable scenarios.

This is what separates a scripted workflow from a true agentic system that plans, acts, and adapts.

Step 6: Add Safety, Guardrails, and Governance

Real workflow autonomous agents require high standards of safety: access control, error checking, rate limiting, human-in-the-loop alternatives, and traceability through logging. A compromise between autonomy and control leads to trustworthiness and compliance.

Step 7: Testing, Iterate, and Improve

Test with actual tasks and boundary cases. Measures must cover the rate of task completion, accuracy, time saved, and customer satisfaction. Reliability is much enhanced by iterative testing (typically involving human reviews initially).

Step 8: Deploy, Monitor, and Scale

Host the agent on stable infrastructure (cloud or on-prem). Monitor usage, errors, and performance, and optimize based on feedback. As needs grow, scale by horizontal expansion or parallel agents for bigger workflows.

How Manus AI Is Being Used Across Different Domains?

Manus AI isn’t just a chatbot, it’s an autonomous AI agent that actively executes tasks across varied domains, from research and travel planning to education and productivity workflows.

1. Data Analysis: Social Media Public Opinion Research

What it does:
Manus AI digs into social media conversations, like Twitter and YouTube, to evaluate public sentiment on topics you care about.

How it helps:

• Insight mining: Extracts themes, trends, and emotional tone from discussions.
• Decision support: Helps businesses understand audience perception before launches or campaigns.
• Visual summaries: Creates charts or summary reports from raw social chatter.

2. Research: B2B Supplier Sourcing

What it does:
Manus conducts in-depth online research across networks to find the best suppliers that match detailed criteria.

How it helps:

• Market scanning: Searches supplier databases and company websites systematically.
• Match scoring: Filters results based on quality, pricing, or other business needs.
• Structured output: Delivers a clean, organized list with contact details and analysis.

3. Life: 7-Day Japan Itinerary with Proposal Ideas

What it does:
Manus AI plans personalized travel like a full 7-day Japan itinerary — complete with activities, tips, and even extras such as special proposal ideas.

How it helps:

• Day-by-day schedule: Suggests what to see, do, and where to eat each day.
• Logistics included: Organizes flights, hotels, transit, and experiences.
• Personal touches: Adds creativity like proposal spots and memorable activities.

4. Education: Campaign Explanation Maps

What it does:
In educational settings, Manus creates visual maps that explain complex campaigns or events to learners, making abstract concepts easier to grasp.

How it helps:

• Visual storytelling: Turns historical or thematic content into digestible diagrams.
• Learning boost: Enhances comprehension for students with intuitive visuals.
• Custom materials: Can adapt maps to specific curriculum needs.

5. Productivity: Candidate Interview Schedule

What it does:
Manus AI can automate and optimize interview planning, scheduling interviews for dozens of candidates while managing time conflicts.

How it helps:

• Smart time slots: Organizes interviews based on availability and priority.
• Conflict-free planning: Avoids overlaps and maximizes interviewer efficiency.
• Output clarity: Generates ready-to-share schedules with reminders and details.

Manus AI vs ChatGPT vs DeepSeek: Complete Comparison

Here’s a complete comparison of how Manus AI is different from ChatGPT and DeepSeek. 

Parameter	Manus AI ​	ChatGPT ​​	DeepSeek ​
Task Handling	Autonomous agents for complex workflows, research, and app building with minimal intervention ​	Conversational responses, content generation, basic agent-like functions ​​	Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) for selective processing, strong in math/coding ​
Real-Time Capabilities	Continuous feedback, workflow visualization, and active engagement ​	Immediate answers but limited deep automation ​	Real-time data processing for finance/healthcare insights ​
Context Length	Extended for multi-step tasks (varies by integration) ​	Up to 128K tokens in advanced versions ​	Up to 128K tokens for long documents ​
Benchmark Strength	Excels in GAIA advanced benchmarks; outperforms in agentic tasks ​	Strong in conversation/content; adopting agent features ​	Robust in conventional benchmarks, math/programming ​
Efficiency	Modular sub-agents reduce load for complex jobs ​	High for quick queries; higher compute for agents ​	MoE activates relevant experts; energy-efficient ​
Cost Structure	Subscription for autonomous execution ​	Tiered plans; evolving to match agents ​	Open-source options; low-cost, high-performance ​
Primary Use Case	Extensive research/analysis overnight ​	Quick answers/content ​	Coding, reasoning, multimodal tasks ​ ​

Conclusion

Manus AI demonstrates how strong contemporary AI agents can be when they do not just chat but act. This implies expediency, reduced operational costs, and improved decision making to businesses.

The good thing is that you do not have to be a large technology firm in order to create something similar. Under the proper planning, tools, and development strategy, AI agents such as Manus can be fitted to your specific business requirements.

Digital Quest, a travel business, partnered with SoluLab to develop an AI-powered chatbot using Generative AI. The chatbot enhanced customer engagement by offering real-time, personalized travel recommendations and hassle-free reservations. It also integrated user feedback and multi-language support, resulting in improved user experience and high ROI.

Whether you plan to automate internal procedures, customer support, or data-oriented operations. SoluLab, an AI agent development company, can help you build an AI agent from scratch as per your business requirements. 

Book a free discovery call today! 

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