(2026-10-15) Is Software Dead Or Just Not For Humans Anymore

Peter Yang: Is Software Dead, or Just Not for Humans Anymore? When I left my job, I thought I’d vibe code a SaaS that made money from users while I slept. Instead, I built open source tools like No AI Slop and Human Review for agents

In this post, I’ll steelman both sides and give you my take on why I think:

• It’s harder than ever to make money from traditional software.
• Money is shifting to software that’s built for agents first.

Here’s what set off the “software is dead” debate again:

Expensive software is being cloned and open sourced. A small team used Opus to rebuild seven Adobe apps, including PhotoCraft (from Photoshop).

Classic computer games are being decompiled and remixed.

4 reasons why traditional software is in trouble

1. AI can now reverse engineer many apps and games
If you can download it, AI can decompile it

2. Builders are replacing SaaS with personal apps (SaaSpocalypse)

For example, I was paying $200 / year for 1of10, a YouTube research tool. The product kept adding features I didn’t need, so I asked Claude to build a replacement. It took just 5 minutes to build the feature that I actually wanted: a Chrome extension that showed me which videos performed well on any YouTube channel.

You don’t have to rebuild an entire SaaS with AI, just the 20% that matters. (80/20 rule)

As another example, instead of paying a monthly subscription for a bloated fitness app, I just built my own with AI:

The counter-argument here is that most people won’t want to build their own software even with AI’s help. But I believe that building with agents won’t feel like coding at all. Instead, building will happen naturally in your chats with AI.

3. Enterprises are replacing SaaS with internal apps

Retool found that 35% of enterprises have replaced SaaS tools with internal apps.

Curative canceled a $600K/year Salesforce.com contract after building an internal CRM.

In enterprise, the biggest competitors to your SaaS might just be internal apps from your customers themselves.

4. AI Agents are replacing humans as software’s main users

I have no idea how to use Blender’s UI: Instead, I rely entirely on Claude to use it through Blender MCP. As I wrote before, if a piece of software doesn’t have an API or MCP that my agent can use, I probably just won’t use it period.

Thankfully, none of this means that “software is dead.” Here’s where I think the money is moving to in software instead: (grrr paywall)