This paper sets out, ambitiously, to present a brief reappraisal of software agents research. Evidently, software agent technology has promised much. However, some five years after the word ‘agent’ came into vogue in the popular computing press, it is perhaps time the efforts in this fledgling area are thoroughly evaluated with a view to refocusing future efforts. We do not pretend to have done this in this paper—but we hope we have sown the first seeds towards a thorough first five-year report on the software agents area. The paper contains some strong views not necessarily widely accepted by the agent community.The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily reflect the views of our organisation.