AI is shrinking the gap between intent and outcome. Generic SaaS gets exposed; agents replace apps. Software becomes plumbing, not a place you visit.
The story
AI tells: repeated “Which means”; stock signposts (“Think about it,” “spicy part”); SaaS noun pileups; tidy binaries (old/new, bridge/collapse); not much human texture beyond lunch.
Rewrite:
What if software was never the point?
We built apps because computers needed a translator. Humans had outcomes. Computers wanted boxes, buttons, and tiny robot rules. Software stood between them waving: “I can help.” Cute bridge goblin.
That layer is thinning.
AI coding tools are lowering the skill floor. Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code – our role is moving from writing code to describing what we want. Less typing. More steering.
Custom software gets cheap, so generic SaaS looks odd. Why pay monthly per seat for a project tracker if someone can spin one up over lunch and still hate meetings?
The exposed categories: form builders, internal dashboards, mid-tier CRMs, generic workflow tools. The tougher ones have hard-to-copy stuff: customers who need each other, private data, rules and approvals, deep infrastructure. Boring fortresses. Yay.
Agents are the stranger bit. Old way: I operate a tool. New way: I instruct an agent. A spreadsheet helps when I wanna poke numbers. But if I can say, “track my expenses and flag weird stuff each month,” the spreadsheet stops being the destination. The outcome is.
Software was a bridge between intent and outcome. Agents shrink the bridge.
Code isn’t disappearing. Code, systems, automation – still humming in the walls. The user-facing app as the product is what’s moving. Software becomes plumbing, not a place we visit.
If you’re a founder, CTO, or SaaS leader, this is worth staring at while there’s room to move.
I dig into this in “The Extinction of Software.” Come argue with me.
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