The Citizen Developer

The Implications of AI Agents for the Citizen Developer

• By Howard M. Cohen
• February 26, 2025

This column has been reporting on and predicting the involvement of artificial intelligence (AI) in low-code/no-code (LCNC) citizen development since around the time Microsoft first introduced CoPilot as a chatbot for Bing and then a replacement for the Cortana assistant application in 2023. Since then, we've discussed how to build better prompts when attempting to work with a particular AI, the coming of Citizen AI, TuringBots, the relationship between AI and Citizen Developers, and an admonition not to make software anymore, but rather to make agents.

Particularly Prescient
That last suggestion was recently validated by none other than the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, during a podcast in which he spoke about business applications and said, "That's probably where they'll all collapse, right? In the agent era."

Microsoft has always been known for its "Big Bets" on a particular product they want their legion of partners to concentrate on and promote most actively. At one time it was actually Microsoft Office and then Office 365. Their Lync communications platform served some time as a Big Bet, though SharePoint was perhaps the best known of the Big Bets until "The Cloud" came along, and then Teams, and most recently CoPilot.

But this is a much bigger bet than any of the others. In a very real sense, Nadella is betting the whole ranch on this one, especially when he predicts the demise of the entire category of products on which Microsoft has built its fortune for the last 50 years. He is predicting the same fate for software-as-a-service apps like Microsoft 365, referring to Excel and Word as simply agents, and suggesting that even the Dynamics business applications will not be exempt.

Even today, agents are being asked to extract analytics and specific business outcomes from the databases that their Dynamics suite interacts with, as well as many other databases. After all, the database is basically half the formula for any application. The other half is the business logic built into the user interface that you sit in front of and interact with.

A New Way of Work
When they introduced things like the Modern Workplace, the Knowledge Worker, and even Microsoft 365, Microsoft declared they were creating "a new way of work."

What Nadella describes now is new way of work that is as completely different from anything else they've ever introduced before.

Right now, how does the end users work with his or her computer? They turn it on and are presented with a Windows interface from which they choose a specific application with which to do what they want to do—not necessarily to complete a specific outcome but do a specific task.

They are then presented with the main menu of that application, from which they choose the specific thing they want to do with it. And they keep making those selections from menus the whole time they're working. They then expect some kind of output, like a report.
And that's been the way we've been doing it since the start of computing.

The Agentic World as described by Nadella and expanded upon in his recent podcast has the users simply asking an agent to do what they want to get done. Often, in this new agentic world, they can even ask for a specific business outcome and the agent will make all the decisions and take all the actions necessary to achieve that outcome. No menus. No ribbons. No dropdowns. Perhaps just a chat prompt, or even just a microphone icon so they can ask verbally.

If you stop to think about a platform they will be using using to create their own applications by pointing, clicking, and dragging, your first question might, "How will they do that with an agent in the middle?" But you'd be wrong to ask that question, because it's something they simply won't have to do anymore. There will be no traditional business applications, so they won't need to create any.

Instead, they'll use a tool like Microsoft CoPilot Studio, and they'll tell it what they want their next agent to be able to do. And they'll tell it in plain language. It will "converse" with them, ask for specifics, and produce that agent. From that point forward whenever they want that outcome, they'll simply ask the agent to do it for them. Essentially, there will be an agent for anything and everything they use to pick from menus.

It's All About You, Unless…
If your work is focused on developing software applications in the traditional way, you may have cause to worry that the new world of agents will make you obsolete. And well you might. After all, everything that's being developed in this Agentic World is meant to be used by normal people. They speak in normal language with the Studio to create the agents they need, then they speak to the agents when they need them. There's literally no application between them, so there's no need for coders or developers of any kind. Simply the end user and an agent that will gladly interact with the database for them and get done what they need done.

Right now, many of the LCNC platform providers are busily introducing their own AI platforms for you. That's great! They're keeping up with the times and this meteoric rise of AI. But start to ask how they plan to implement agents before choosing one of them.
It's a huge change in how we relate to our computers. Start planning for it now.