What AI changes in the weights
Coding agents write, test and refactor. For clear specs, implementation is no longer the bottleneck.
Dependency upgrades, framework migrations and bug triage become agent work. Ownership stays with you.
Mapping schemas, writing adapters and syncing systems gets cheap, so mixing vendors and your own code is easier.
A CRUD app with a nice UI can be rebuilt in days. Vendors whose moat is trust, data or network keep their value.
The price for a given capability tier keeps falling fast. Workloads that didn't pay off last year can this year.
When everyone can buy or prompt the commodity, only the unique core sets you apart.
Models are commodities. Your context isn't. Data and domain knowledge decide who has the better AI.
Tests, evals and review capacity become the bottleneck. Knowing it's correct matters more than writing it.
When anything can be built, deciding what to build and what 'done' means is the scarce skill.
SOC 2, licenses, SLAs and a track record can't be generated. Regulated vendors get stronger.
The line between “core, so build it” and “commodity, so buy it” has moved. Internal tools, glue and thin workflow apps are now cheap enough to own. Pricing engines, ledgers and your data model are still the parts that matter most.
Pay vendors for things AI can't produce: licenses, certifications, networks, proprietary datasets and someone who carries the pager. Be more sceptical of seat-based feature bundles.
Use models for unstructured input and the long tail, and wrap them in evals and deterministic checks. Once a behaviour is stable and high-volume, turn it into code.
- what didn't changeSomeone still owns it. AI makes code cheaper to write, but every line still needs an owner, an on-call rotation and a security review.
- what didn't changeCorrectness where money moves. A ledger has to balance every time. Probabilistic output needs deterministic checks around it.
- what didn't changeKnowing what to build. Agents make execution cheap, so choosing the right problem is where most of the value is now.