@10xmylife: I suddenly realized that as Agent capabilities keep evolving, Skill is likely to become a more important application form than software. Traditional software essentially imposes a fixed way of working: open the app, find a function, fill in forms, follow steps one by one. But Skill is different. It doesn't provide an interface, but rather…
Summary
This article discusses how with the evolution of AI Agent capabilities, Skill (skill/workflow encapsulation) may replace traditional software as a more important application form. In the future, Agents will dynamically combine Skills around tasks, while software will retreat to the background as infrastructure.
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Cached at: 07/13/26, 11:53 AM
I suddenly realized that as Agent capabilities continue to evolve, Skill may very well become a more important application form than software.
Traditional software, in essence, imposes a fixed way of working on users: open an app, find a function, fill in a form, follow step-by-step processes.
But Skill is different. It doesn’t provide an interface — it provides methods, experience, rules, and tool-calling approaches for completing tasks. An Agent can freely combine multiple Skills based on its goal, dynamically completing tasks.
When an Agent with Skills can already deliver the final result, why would users still need to open a specific piece of software, learn its interface, and operate according to its prescribed flow?
Of course, software won’t disappear. Databases, payment systems, professional tools, and infrastructure will still exist — but they will gradually move to the background, existing in the form of APIs and CLIs, so that Agent can call them easily.
The future app ecosystem might look like this:
- Agent replaces the software entry point (this trend is already emerging)
- Skill encapsulates fixed workflows
- APIs and tools replace manual operations (the major infrastructure for Agents)
- Software becomes backend infrastructure
In the past, people actively sought out software to complete tasks. In the future, Agents will proactively organize all available capabilities around a task. Skill may very well become the new unit of application distribution in the Agent era.
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