From human intelligence to Hybrid AI: The next step for Toloka

Over the years Toloka has focused on automating the work that only humans can do. We built our business on the core principle that combining technology with human insight is central to solving the most complex tasks.

Today, we are applying that same principle to a new product: Tendem, a hybrid AI agent designed for professionals, small business owners, and entrepreneurs who need to delegate complex work without the overhead of traditional project management. It automates the entire freelance workflow, delivering professional-grade, verified outputs.

Tendem is built on the foundation of Toloka technologies and our expert community.

Introducing Tendem

AI-only solutions are fast but often lack the judgment and reliability needed for high-stakes work. Traditional freelance marketplaces offer human expertise but force you to become a project manager and do everything from vetting to negotiating and reviewing, which is consuming time and effort. What if you could combine the speed of AI with the reliability of human expertise, without the management overhead?

Tendem is our answer. It automates the entire freelance workflow, delivering professional-grade, verified outputs.

Results of our benchmarks show that a hybrid approach outperforms classical freelance solutions in quality and time to result (thanks to AI guidance and control), and classical AI agents in quality (thanks to essential human input).

The moment simple tasks stopped being simple

Toloka’s history began with small, tightly defined tasks used to train early ML algorithms, where a single contribution took about half a minute. As models became more capable, the work remaining for humans grew more intricate. Now, providing a single, meaningful data item to move frontier AI forward can require hours, days, or even weeks of an expert's time.

We have always excelled at orchestrating human intelligence at scale, developing mathematical models to aggregate judgments and marketplace mechanics to reward top performers. Yet, that automation was never enough for long-horizon complex tasks. Why?

Because those tasks first require decomposition—a high-level, step-by-step plan. For a long time, decomposition was a manual art form, a bottleneck where a human project manager had to step in before our automated systems could take over. Agentic LLMs changed everything.

Orchestrating complexity with Tendem 

Tendem harnesses this shift through a sophisticated, multi-agent orchestration system where an LLM operates as an automated project manager. It reads the task, decomposes the complex goal into a clear sequence of steps, and delegates each part to the best executor—whether that is another AI, a specialized human expert, or a generalist annotator. Beyond simple delegation, the system acts as a Quality Control mechanism, subjecting every deliverable to automated checks and rigorous human verification to ensure it is business-ready.

Human verification is performed by our Expert Network, a curated body of vetted professionals, many holding PhDs and Masters degrees. These are the same experts trusted to generate the high-quality data that trains today's frontier models. We built Tendem to integrate their proven judgment and verified skills—in complex domains like deep research, fact-checking, math, and strategic writing—directly into your workflow

Beyond AI versus humans

From the start, we have always believed that human input is at the heart of everything. We've built a platform for managing the efforts of a diverse, global, and highly qualified pool of experts across many domains. 

Tendem is yet another opportunity to further generate opportunities for people to monetize their skills, integrating them directly into the professional workflows of the future.

We've moved past the question of "AI versus humans" and are now building the systems where they work together to achieve more than either could alone.

I am proud of what the Toloka team has accomplished. Tendem is a strong foundation for a future that will always have a place for humans in it.