Platforms are becoming components—agents are the architects
SaaS Was Built to Be the Destination
But users no longer want to live in your product
Historically, SaaS platforms were designed as destinations. Users logged in, explored dashboards, configured features, and triggered actions manually. The product was the workflow. The value was created through usage.
But that model is fading.
AI agents are ushering in a new reality—where users don’t interact with your platform directly. Instead, they delegate tasks to agents, which stitch together capabilities from many platforms into dynamic, automated flows.
In this world, your SaaS isn’t the destination.
It’s the substrate.
What It Means to Be a Substrate
Agents treat SaaS platforms as raw material for orchestration
To be a substrate means your product becomes an ingredient, not the meal. Agents don’t navigate your UI. They call functions, extract data, trigger events, and compose outcomes across services. Your platform is:
- Queried, not explored
- Activated, not navigated
- Combined, not contained
You are part of a larger automation chain—not the endpoint. And the systems that thrive in this new order are those that make orchestration easy, stable, and scalable.
Why This Shift Changes the Competitive Landscape
Power moves from platforms to flows
In a substrate model:
- Value accrues to the orchestrators—those who compose meaningful workflows across tools.
- Stickiness comes from how well you integrate, not how many features you offer.
- Success depends on how useful your outputs are—not how engaging your UI is.
This reframes how SaaS is evaluated. You’re not competing for screen time. You’re competing for inclusion in agent logic.
If agents can’t access your capabilities easily, you become invisible.
How SaaS Providers Must Adapt
You are now part of someone else’s system design
To stay relevant in an agent-orchestrated world, SaaS platforms must:
- Expose granular, stable, and well-documented APIs
Agents need predictable, composable services—not opaque, sprawling endpoints. - Deliver machine-usable outcomes
Responses must be structured, reliable, and semantically clear to downstream agents. - Offer event hooks and real-time triggers
Agents need to react to changes as they happen. Webhooks and streaming outputs are critical. - Support identity, context, and memory
Agents require continuity across tasks. Your system must support session awareness and state sharing. - Make orchestration observable and testable
Developers (and agents) need tools to debug, monitor, and refine their use of your services.
The goal: become a reliable building block in the automation economy.
For Educators and Parents: This Is a Shift in How Tools Are Taught
We must prepare learners to think in systems, not screens
In the substrate era, future professionals will no longer ask, “Which platform should I use?” but “Which parts of which platforms help me achieve this outcome?”
This means learners must develop:
- Orchestration thinking: How parts connect to form systems
- Goal-based reasoning: Framing outcomes for agent execution
- Automation fluency: Delegating, testing, and improving workflows over time
We’re not moving away from software—we’re moving into a world where the software moves for us.
Final Thought: If You’re Not the Flow, Be the Fuel
The future isn’t built on apps—it’s built on agents using apps
SaaS platforms that cling to being the center of the experience will find themselves bypassed. Those that embrace their role as composable, agent-ready substrates will remain indispensable.
The interface is no longer the product.
The outcome is.
And in the agent-orchestrated future, your value is defined not by how users interact with you—but by what gets done because of you.
