[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":152},["ShallowReactive",2],{"thinking-\u002Fthinking\u002Fyour-ai-agents-are-probably-just-traditional-software":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"date":137,"description":138,"extension":139,"meta":140,"navigation":141,"path":142,"seo":143,"stem":144,"tags":145,"__hash__":151},"thinking\u002Fthinking\u002Fyour-AI-agents-are-probably-just-traditional-software.md","Your AI Agents Are Probably Just Traditional Software",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":134},"minimark",[9,13,17,20,23,26,29,51,54,57,60,63,66,69,72,83,86,89,92,95,98,101,104,107,110,113,116,119,122,125,128,131],[10,11,5],"h1",{"id":12},"your-ai-agents-are-probably-just-traditional-software",[14,15,16],"p",{},"I know that sounds like I’m trying to be provocative, but the more I build this stuff, the more obvious it becomes.",[14,18,19],{},"I’ve spent this weekend working on a small company-monitoring agent. The bit everyone would call “AI” is fairly narrow: I’m using Gemini to help retrieve, interpret and classify business information.",[14,21,22],{},"That bit matters. It’s useful.",[14,24,25],{},"But it is not the whole product.",[14,27,28],{},"Around that, I still had to build:",[30,31,32,36,39,42,45,48],"ul",{},[33,34,35],"li",{},"a PostgreSQL data layer",[33,37,38],{},"Docker orchestration",[33,40,41],{},"MCP tools using FastMCP",[33,43,44],{},"Python logic",[33,46,47],{},"an HTTP wrapper around Companies House",[33,49,50],{},"the execution logic for when the process should run, what it should check, and what happens next",[14,52,53],{},"In other words, most of the work was ordinary software engineering.",[14,55,56],{},"This is where I think the current language around AI gets messy.",[14,58,59],{},"AI is often talked about as if it sits outside the normal software engineering process. As if once there’s a model involved, we’re suddenly in a different world where architecture, state, data modelling, permissions, retries, monitoring, testing and deployment are secondary details.",[14,61,62],{},"They are not.",[14,64,65],{},"The model is a component.",[14,67,68],{},"A powerful component, yes. A very useful one. But still a component.",[14,70,71],{},"A lot of “AI agent” work is really:",[73,74,80],"pre",{"className":75,"code":77,"language":78,"meta":79},[76],"language-text","Prompt → model call → tool\u002FAPI call → state update → next step → repeat.\n","text","",[81,82,77],"code",{"__ignoreMap":79},[14,84,85],{},"That can be valuable. I’m not dismissing it at all.",[14,87,88],{},"But the orchestration is software.",[14,90,91],{},"The data layer is software.",[14,93,94],{},"The integrations are software.",[14,96,97],{},"The reliability work is software.",[14,99,100],{},"The scheduling is software.",[14,102,103],{},"The permissions and audit trail are software.",[14,105,106],{},"Only part of the system is AI.",[14,108,109],{},"I think this distinction matters because the way we talk about AI is starting to create a strange split in the engineering world.",[14,111,112],{},"“AI people” on one side.",[14,114,115],{},"“Software engineers” on the other.",[14,117,118],{},"That feels wrong to me.",[14,120,121],{},"The best AI products I’ve seen are not built by treating AI as magic, or as something separate from engineering. They’re built by people who understand how to put a model inside a well-designed system.",[14,123,124],{},"The hype will settle down eventually. It always does.",[14,126,127],{},"And when it does, I think we’ll be left with a much clearer view:",[14,129,130],{},"AI is not replacing software engineering.",[14,132,133],{},"It is becoming part of it.",{"title":79,"searchDepth":135,"depth":135,"links":136},2,[],"2026-05-04","A software engineer's reflection on why many AI agents are really conventional software systems with a model in the loop.","md",{},true,"\u002Fthinking\u002Fyour-ai-agents-are-probably-just-traditional-software",{"title":5,"description":138},"thinking\u002Fyour-AI-agents-are-probably-just-traditional-software",[146,147,148,149,150],"ai","software-engineering","ai-agents","agentic-ai","engineering","SlC7HBCHJTgYIoWRjtD_CIO_uNzmEYRYrX4lr418eDI",1785781229203]