Adam Klein: design for software agents first

Adam Klein's June 25, 2026 article on dev.to urges product teams to treat software agents as primary users rather than afterthoughts [Dev.to]. Klein argues that autonomous agents, such as LLMs, bots, or scripted workflows, are now the first and most active users of many SaaS products. He stresses that agents should be considered "first-class citizens" in product design, acting as the exploratory layer that reads documentation, runs trials, and recommends solutions to their human managers [Dev.to].

Key takeaways include designing APIs that tolerate high-volume, multi-field requests, separating agent-focused documentation from human-focused UI guides, and re-evaluating latency expectations [Dev.to]. For background agent tasks, throughput matters more than millisecond-level response times, whereas human-in-the-loop interactions still demand low latency.

Klein introduces the terminology "agent-first" versus "agent-only" to help teams articulate the shift without alienating human stakeholders [Dev.to]. By adopting an agent-first approach, companies can create a competitive moat through well-structured, versioned OpenAPI specs, reducing integration friction and locking in downstream automation pipelines. Early-adopter brands can also gain network effects by publishing sandbox environments and synthetic agent test suites, attracting LLM developers who embed those services into their own products.

Companies that ignore agents risk losing market share, as agents autonomously select alternatives based on raw API performance [Dev.to]. By treating agents as the first point of contact, teams force themselves to expose clean, versioned contracts early, which pays off when the next generation of LLM-driven automation scales.