Software needs to evolve to make way for the agents
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AI makers have trained agents to use software like people do. Now the industry is starting to build software meant for agents instead.
Why it matters: If agents stop using software the way humans do, tech competition could shift from who has the best interface to who controls the APIs, data and permissions agents need to act.
The big picture: Today's agents are like self-driving cars forced to navigate roads built for humans — stoplights, signage and all.
- Creating new pathways for AI is a lot easier than creating a whole new system of roads.
What they're saying: "Agents interacting with each other will figure out how to communicate efficiently without having to emulate clicks on buttons," former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun told Axios in a recent interview.
Catch up quick: Anthropic launched its Model Context Protocol before agentic work was mainstream, giving developers a standard way to connect AI systems to tools and data sources.
State of play: Last month, startup Mesa introduced a versioned file system built for agents working on long-running tasks.
- Stripe, Mastercard and OpenAI are adding payment rails for agentic shopping.
- Salesforce announced its Headless 360 approach last month. The agentic enterprise platform makes its key software available directly to agents.
Zoom in: San Francisco-based Zapier shows how this shift is already playing out.
- Zapier has spent over a decade turning business software into discrete, programmable actions — a model that maps far more cleanly to AI agents than to traditional interfaces.
- Now AI agents can create, trigger or operate those workflows themselves.
- "We are definitely heading to a world, I believe, where agents are the predominant user of software," Zapier CEO Wade Foster told Axios. "I don't think that means that humans quit using software. I just think that there's going to be so many more agents."
Zoom out: Other industry veterans also say software designed for agents is becoming the norm.
- "I think we're going to see more of that kind of experience," AWS marketing chief Julia White said.
- "As agents become the biggest users of software, then all software has to be available in a headless fashion," Box CEO Aaron Levie said on X. "Agents won't be using your UI, they'll be talking to your APIs."
Between the lines: Hardware will also get a rethink.
- So far there has been a lot of speculation and a fair bit of investment.
- The early tries at AI-first hardware have largely focused on gathering more input, such as glasses and jewelry with always-on microphones.
- OpenAI has been the most vocal about its efforts. It promised to show off its first, Jony Ive-designed device later this year.
Yes, but: Hardware is hard. It will almost certainly take longer to figure out because each attempt takes more time, money and distribution muscle than a software launch.
The bottom line: If we don't build a new layer of software built for agents, AI might just design and build it without us.
