The way we interact with software has been remarkably consistent for years: open an app, follow a navigation/menu flow, complete a task. It’s efficient, but rigid. Now, a new approach is taking hold. AI agents, powered by generative models and real-time context, are moving us toward an experience defined by intent and automation - not taps and clicks. The question is no longer if they’ll have an impact, but rather how profound their influence will be.
What Are AI Agents, Really?
Unlike traditional apps that passively wait for input, AI agents are autonomous systems that understand intent, make decisions, and carry out multi-step tasks across platforms and services. They don’t just respond, they act. Agents can:
- Schedule appointments
- Make purchases
- Automate multi-step workflows
- Orchestrate actions across tools and services
These capabilities are fueled by recent breakthroughs in generative AI, tool integration, and contextual understanding. Agents are already showing up in real products, from assistants that summarize meetings and prioritize emails, to coding copilots that can generate and deploy full-stack applications. And this is just the beginning.
The Future of Apps in an Agent-Driven World
It’s tempting to imagine AI agents rendering most apps obsolete. Why launch five different apps to book a vacation when you can simply tell an agent, “Plan a five day trip to California next month”? The agent can access your calendar, check flights and hotels, plan detailed iteneraries, and coordinate everything in the background via APIs.
Industry leaders like Satya Nadella and Bill Gates have speculated that agents could become the primary platform, replacing search engines, productivity tools, and possibly even social media. The reasoning behind this view is compelling: natural language is a more intuitive interface than traditional GUIs. Instead of learning how each app works, users can simply express their intent and let the agent handle the details.
However, this vision isn’t universally accepted. Many experts believe that while agents will become the primary interface for simple or multi-step tasks, traditional apps will continue to thrive in areas requiring rich interaction or domain-specific workflows like photo editing, gaming, or complex enterprise dashboards.
The most likely outcome, in my opinion, is a combination of both ideas: AI agents won’t eliminate apps entirely, but they will fundamentally shift how we access and use them.
Agents as a Personal Orchestration Layer
AI agents will likely function as a personal orchestration layer between users and services. They’ll trigger app functionality behind the scenes, with users rarely needing to open the apps themselves. For example, if you prompt your agent to:
- “Pay my latest internet bill” → Your agent uses your service provider’s API to complete the transaction
- “Schedule a meeting with the product and design teams” → It books calendar time based on availability, and notifies attendees via email.
In this model, apps remain important, but agents become the entry point. This shifts value from beautiful UIs to capable backends and robust APIs.
Standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) could accelerate this transition by solving one of the core challenges for AI agents: context awareness. After all, agents are only as effective as the information they can access. If your agent doesn’t know your schedule, communication preferences, or recent activity, it can’t make truly helpful decisions.
Generative UI: When Agents Need a Frontend
Interactions with AI agents won’t be purely voice or text-based. Users will sometimes need visual feedback to choose between options, confirm an agent’s output, or provide feedback on complex data analysis. This is where generative UI comes into play.
Instead of fixed layouts, future interfaces could be generated dynamically based on context. For example, if you ask an agent to book a dinner reservation, it might generate a custom UI card for each restaurant option displaying:
- Restaurant name and rating
- Available reservation times
- Menu preview
- Relevant images
You would then select your preferred option, the agent would confirm the reservation, and the UI disappears afterwards. This approach preserves the simplicity of agent-driven interactions while providing necessary visual support when needed.
What This Means for Developers
The AI agent era won’t just change how users interact with technology, it will reshape how software is built. Here are a few shifts I believe developers should prepare for:
1. Apps as Services
Apps will increasingly expose their functionality via APIs in order for agents to interact with them programmatically. Think of apps less as “destinations” and more as “capabilities” to be invoked.
2. Intent-Centric Design
Instead of designing for clicks and flows, developers will design for intents. For example, “Book a flight,” “Order delivery,” “Share this file.” That means robust action schemas, clear authorization flows, and well-documented endpoints.
3. Integration Over Interface
Developers will prioritize interoperability. Standards like MCP will help apps advertise their capabilities and context to agents, allowing for seamless orchestration. Generative UI will likely shift developer priorities from building static screens to publishing reusable, composable components that agents can assemble on their own.
4. Security and Trust
Agents will operate across sensitive domains like health care, finance, and identity. Developers must build for transparency, auditability, and user control. It won’t be enough to be functional; agents must also be accountable.
Conclusion
Fast-forward five years, and the way we interact with technology could feel radically different. Instead of navigating through screens, you might delegate most digital tasks to a personal AI that knows your routines, preferences, and priorities. You’ll still use rich apps for focused tasks, but many everyday interactions like scheduling, searching, and buying will all flow through your agent.
The apps we build today won’t disappear completely, but users won’t drive them directly. Agents will. For developers, that means thinking beyond pixels and navigation to design for delegation, intent, and orchestration.
In short: the agent is becoming the new interface. The best way to prepare is to start building for this reality now. So ask yourself — if your app can’t be used by an agent, how will it compete in the next wave of software?