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You need something done in your business. You hire an agency, they build the backend and frontend, and now you have software to maintain. There are patches, security updates and another piece of functionality you want added.
I've felt held hostage by that model. Each change becomes another development conversation and another retainer. The way I think about that work has changed.
Part of the change is having tools such as Codex and Claude write code. There's value in that. But I'm more interested in what happens when we think of the work itself as a process an agent can carry out.
Start with the task you're trying to get done
Take uploading something to a customer relationship management system, or CRM. That's a business task. A piece of software can contain the logic for doing it. An AI agent can also carry out that process through a conversation in which you describe what you need.
The outcome you're after is the same: get the information into the CRM. You're changing how you express and execute the instructions.
In conventional software, a developer might write that logic in a language such as PHP or Ruby. With an agent, you can describe the work in English. That's the possibility that interests me as a business owner. You can talk about the process in the language you already use to explain your business.
Look beyond getting AI to write the code
If I treat AI only as a faster way to write a backend and frontend, I'm still thinking within the same software model. I'm asking a different tool to produce the thing I would previously have hired someone to code.
An agent gives me another way to think about the work: describe the logic inside the business and have the agent execute the process. That doesn't establish that maintenance or security work has disappeared. It changes the way I'm approaching the task.
It's also why bolting AI onto a business feels incomplete to me. I need to understand the workflow, procedure or process I want it to carry out. Otherwise, I'm choosing a technology before I've described the job.
Start with a task you already need done, such as that CRM upload. Describe the process in ordinary English before deciding whether you need more software built to do it.