Last autumn, I had the chance to speak with Dana Lawson, CTO at Netlify, for ShiftMag. This year, I was thrilled to learn that she’ll be joining us as a speaker at Infobip Shift in Zadar – and ShiftMag readers can get a special discount.

Ahead of her talk, I wanted to talk to her about Hot App Summer, Netlify’s community challenge that encouraged developers to ship one AI-assisted or vibecoded app every day for 30 days in June, because it’s a great example of how AI is changing the way we learn, build, and experiment with software.

Netlify got 1.000.000 users in three weeks

Netlify recently crossed 16 million users, adding 1 million of them in just three weeks. For Dana, the milestone itself is less interesting than the pace of growth – and what it says about who is building software today:

The number is exciting, but the pace tells the real story: it points to a fundamental shift in how software gets built.

As Netlify’s CEO Mett Billman in his post says, when Netlify crossed 10 million users, much of the growth was driven by developers discovering the platform through coding agents.

That wave hasn’t slowed, but the audience is expanding beyond professional developers: finance teams are building dashboards, sales teams are creating prototypes for prospects, and customer success teams are shipping tools they once would have needed engineering to build.

AI is lowering the barrier to software development to the point where building is no longer reserved for people with deep technical expertise. Someone with an idea, a spreadsheet, and an internet connection can increasingly turn that idea into working software in hours.

We can now learn by shipping

That shift was on full display in Hot App Summer, which started as a “build one app a day” challenge and grew into a community where people publicly shared their projects and experiences. As Lawson put it, “People were not competing, they were inspiring each other.”

What stood out to Dana most was what that revealed about how people learn today:

People learn by shipping. You can build something on Monday, discover what you still don’t know on Tuesday, improve it on Wednesday, and then repeat the process.

As she put it, you learn more from thirty imperfect apps than from one perfect tutorial, because every project exposes something new to solve.

Now, even small problems can be solved with software

Looking back at the projects created during challenge, Dana points out that most were not attempts to build the next billion-dollar startup:

Many focused on solving small, everyday problems – from time management and business processes to family coordination and content creation.

That part of the software market has often been underserved because custom solutions were not always worth building financially.

AI suddenly makes these niche problems economically viable to solve.

Engineers are not disappearing, their role is expanding

Netlify’s CTO believes this lower barrier to entry points to a much bigger shift across the industry: computer literacy is changing. It used to mean knowing how to use technology, but today it also means knowing how to create with it.

This allows experts from different fields to solve problems in their own areas without waiting for someone else to create the tools they need:

A CFO can build a forecasting system, a teacher can create a classroom tool, a small business owner can create their own software instead of waiting for someone else to build it.

In her view, more people creating software does not make engineers less important and at Shift in Zadar, she is going to challenge the idea that AI makes professional engineers less valuable. Her point is the opposite: as more people start building software, strong infrastructure, security, and engineering practices matter even more:

Engineers are not disappearing, their role is expanding. They are becoming the people who build platforms, guardrails, and systems that allow millions of others to develop software safely.

Get your ticket for Shift conference with a special discount for ShiftMag readers!

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As technology accelerates, the way we build and deploy applications is transforming at its core. Leading that transformation is Dana, who has guided engineering teams through major transitions at GitHub, Heptio, and now Netlify.

In our conversation, she shared her vision for the future of web development and what engineers will need to succeed in the next few years.

The composable, agent-driven future

Lawson sees the future of web architecture moving decisively toward composability and automation-driven responsiveness. She highlights three trends that will redefine development over the next three to five years.

First, companies are dismantling monolithic applications in favor of micro-frontends. Teams now design for both human users and AI agents, forcing them to rethink performance from the ground up.

Second, composable architecture is taking hold, a headless, microservice-inspired approach that makes systems extensible and resilient:

The goal is easy extensibility, because we genuinely don’t know what’s coming next.

The third, and most disruptive, shift centers on how data gets consumed. AI agents, not humans, are calling APIs, which drives an intense need for speed. Edge computing, caching, and edge-first rendering are no longer best practices; they are now baseline requirements.

Scale your team with trust, not bureaucracy

To meet these new technical demands, engineering leaders must rethink how they scale teams. Lawson argues that traditional models like Spotify’s are giving way to leaner, flatter organizations.

“The expectation is that individuals in tech can now do more,” she says. This shift favors teams with fewer layers of management, broader spans of control, and higher autonomy. To sustain velocity and creativity, Lawson emphasizes three cultural pillars:

• Adopt a growth mindset and integrate AI tools into daily workflows.
• Develop design sensibility, what Lawson calls “taste,” as engineers move toward live, one-click prototyping.
• Maintain alignment across horizontal teams, since less bureaucracy means coordination becomes both harder and more crucial.

Does the full-stack developer still exist?

As complexity spreads across the frontend, backend, and edge, many question whether the “full-stack developer” still exists. Lawson insists the role is not obsolete; it is evolving.

“Agents have now unlocked us to be truly full-stack,” she explains. Developers can master one domain and rely on AI to fill gaps in another, removing the friction of cross-team handoffs.

Lawson compares this moment to the rise of DevOps:

It’s the same premise. Twenty-six years ago, SysAdmins felt threatened by DevOps. It evolved, and now we’re one step further. Developers are gaining even more control of their systems.

In her view, the developer role is not disappearing – it is expanding. As barriers to entry drop, citizen developers such as PMs, designers, and entrepreneurs are joining the ranks. Professional engineers must adapt, sharpening their skills and embracing the new, AI-augmented workflow.

Agents can do the work, but humans still run the show

Even with smarter tools and modular architectures, Lawson sees one major challenge left: closing the “last mile” of getting an idea online.

Modern coding tools have simplified development, but deployment and management still demand effort, especially from new developers. As companies introduce AI into their pipelines, Lawson advises them to apply the same security and compliance guardrails used during the DevOps revolution.

You want to make sure you’re not leaking data or secrets, and that you’re not trusting agents blindly.

Teams need transparent documentation, well-defined context files, and clear rules for how code moves through the development lifecycle.

For Lawson, the next generation of technologists must focus as much on soft skills as on code. As agents take over more execution, human collaboration becomes the differentiator. She encourages young developers to lean into teamwork, communication, and empathy, skills that will define success in an increasingly horizontal industry.

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AI isn’t just generating text and images anymore – it’s taking action. That’s where Agent Experience (AX) comes in. Coined by Netlify co-founder and CEO Matt Biilman, AX is like UX or DX, but designed for AI agents, with clean APIs and machine-friendly docs they can actually use.

Matt has spent decades building tools for developers and is widely known as the mind behind the term Jamstack.

This September 14-16, he’s taking the stage as a keynote speaker at Infobip Shift in Zadar, Croatia, the perfect chance to dive into AI agents and how they’re shaping Netlify’s future.

Let’s empower teams to build the software they know – but much faster with agents

When it comes to AI agents and Netlify’s evolving vision, Matt says it feels like déjà vu – like he’s back in 2015. Back then, they set out to unlock the power of the web for a new wave of developers.

They built the tools, workflows, and frameworks to take ideas from zero to production at any scale. Now, Matt sees history repeating itself – but this time, they’re doing it all over again for a brand-new audience: AI agents.

So, the mission hasn’t changed, but the players have. According to Matt, the first step is enabling teams to use agents to build the same kinds of software they’ve been developing over the past decade – but at a much faster pace.

Everything we’re doing now is focused on making Netlify the best possible platform for agents – from deploying and running them to enabling interaction and supporting the teams that use them.

Because at the end of the day, these agents are building things for people. That’s what excites Matt most: the opportunity for Netlify to once again help make the web a powerful platform, this time for a whole new wave of users and applications.

Agent-powered infrastructure will drive the future of development

Matt explains that the next phase involves creating new building blocks on the Netlify platform to enable entirely new types of software solutions – ones that wouldn’t be possible without generative AI.

He expects a major shift in how companies approach building versus buying software:

I think we’ll transition from spending on SaaS – essentially renting software – to investing in infrastructure and software powered by agents, which companies build, deploy, and maintain themselves.

In this new landscape, Matt believes platforms like Netlify will come out on top. Their bold, fully managed, web-focused approach makes them ideally suited to integrate and support AI agents.

What magic will Matt bring to Infobip Shift 2025?

As for his talk at the Infobip Shift conference, Matt notes that September already feels like the distant future given the rapid pace of AI development, so he’s sure many of his ideas will have evolved by then. But he offered a teaser to spark curiosity:

I plan to talk about the broader category of AX, what companies are doing to improve their products and platforms for working with agents, and what that looks like in practice.

Matt will share real examples from Netlify (what the team has built, shipped, and how it’s making an impact) along with insights into what other companies in the space are doing.

He’ll also discuss how the industry is starting to shape early standards for how agents interact with both Netlify’s products and the web itself.

Want to hear more? Join us at Infobip Shift, September 14 – 16.

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