Personal agents will replace consumer apps with OS-level interfaces

Rachel Lee Neighbors predicts that personal AI agents will become the primary interface for consuming content and making purchases, effectively replacing traditional consumer apps. She argues that operating system vendors like Google, Microsoft, and Apple will seek to own this interface to control user experience and monetization, similar to Microsoft's historical battles with browsers. Neighbors cites Amazon's lawsuit against Perplexity's agentic browser Comet as evidence of this conflict, noting that companies resist being reduced to APIs because they lose control over ads and upsells. She states that B2C competition will shift to fulfillment behind APIs, while B2B interoperability standards will become the primary moat. Neighbors highlights the A2UI standard, which allows APIs to send JSON schemas to AI assistants to generate on-the-fly UI widgets. She warns that building custom, non-standard internal tools reduces interoperability and hiring flexibility, whereas adhering to open standards allows agents to collaborate across organizations. Neighbors contends that the future of software is not in standalone apps but in standardized APIs and interoperable protocols that allow personal agents to act on behalf of users, a shift that will force companies to compete on fulfillment rather than interface control.