In HTTP, browsers are called ‘user agents’ — they were meant to act on behalf of users. This initial positioning has sort-of carried forward even now:
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Browsers are one of the few pieces of software left that allow plugins & addons, that allow customisability.
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Browsers let users override choices. You can set your own min font size, overriding any site’s CSS. You can use reader modes.
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Browsers let users inspect applications via devtools, script applications by allowing users to run code on a developer console.
Browsers are one of the last vestiges of an old-school way of building software: software that is extensible, that users can control and change to better suit their needs.
Most current software we use today is the opposite.
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Most software (whether SaaS, mobile apps or desktop apps) is not programmable.
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Decisions are taken by product builders, not users. If a product owner hasn’t added a feature that you want, you can’t go and add it yourself!
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Most software doesn’t empower users, it enforces rigid workflows.
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We have taken away most customisability. Each option in a SaaS product is expensive to support, and it’s rational as product builders to reduce surface area and remove options that 99.9% of your users don’t use.
All of this happens because today’s software users aren’t programmers: they don’t know the internals of how software, operating systems work. Most software is built to be used by the mass market and as a result it encodes a set of assumptions about how it's meant to be used.
AI agents could reverse this trend.
I can see a world where users have personal AI agents running on their behalf. It wouldn’t matter if a product is scriptable or not, or if it has an API or not — users could just ask the agent to automate a task on their behalf! The agent may use the API, or it may just resort to spinning up a browser and clicking on pixels.
What happens when most users are able to finally take control of the tools that they use daily? I think it's finally time for general purpose compute to be actually accessible by the masses.
This fills me with optimism; similar to the heady days of Web 2.0: when everyone wasn’t so jaded about empowering users, exposing APIs was the norm, mashups were possible and products like Yahoo Pipes were built.
This is a perspective to keep in mind as we build AI-first products — let's enable our users to do great things!