The Agent Surface: Designing Products for Users Who Never Open the App

About the session

People increasingly use software through AI agents as well as through a product’s interface. That changes the contact points a team needs to design, document, and support.

This All Things Open technical session examines the agent surface: the ways an agent discovers capabilities, gets context, takes permitted actions, and produces results that a person can inspect.

What it covers

• The difference between screen interaction and structured access through APIs and tools.
• Context that persists beyond a single interaction.
• Boundaries for actions, permissions, and delegated work.
• Evidence that lets a person inspect what actually happened.

For organizers

This topic can be adapted for engineering teams, architecture audiences, and technology leaders. Get in touch to discuss the audience and the decisions you want the session to help them make.

The presentation PDF is available below. It preserves the incremental builds used in the delivered deck.