{"slug": "please-ship-apis-not-ai", "title": "Please ship APIs, not AI", "summary": "A developer urges companies to ship well-designed APIs exposing core functionality instead of building product-specific AI chat bars or agents, arguing that agent infrastructure is essential even if it means becoming a low-level provider. The author emphasizes that agents are only as good as their tools and that APIs enable faster, more flexible integration than UI-based computer use.", "body_md": "# Please ship APIs, not AI\n\nPlease expose your company’s core functionality via a well-considered, easily accessible API.\n\nPlease consider token efficiency, fine-grained permissions, human-in-the-loop hooks, documentation, and usage in skills when designing this API.\n\nPlease do this instead of (or in parallel to) building a product-specific AI chat bar or side bar or assistant or agent.\n\nPlease do this despite the fact that it might pose an existential threat to your company. I know it might hurt to sink beneath the maw of as just another lowly agent infrastructure provider, but there is greatness in infrastructure. It’s hard and necessary.\n\nPlease do this because my agent is only as good as its tools. I want to use my agent for more, and more is often locked up behind UIs. Computer use is working these days, but it’s slow. Please let me skip all that and just use your API.\n\nPlease do this, and leap ahead to the next frontier, whatever that is to you. Feel free to give me outcomes instead of dashboards and all that. Whatever it is, I’ll hear you out. But please ship an API first.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/please-ship-apis-not-ai", "canonical_source": "https://iamwillwang.com/notes/please-ship-apis-not-ai/", "published_at": "2026-07-26 19:15:26+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-26 19:52:25.968049+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-agents", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-products"], "entities": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/please-ship-apis-not-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/please-ship-apis-not-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/please-ship-apis-not-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/please-ship-apis-not-ai.jsonld"}}