I recently watched two videos — one about Vibe Coding and another about AI’s greatest help. Looking back, both explore the same question: what can Agents really change, and what do they bring?
The need for personalization
There used to be a class of needs that most would consider “not worth doing”:
- Something only one or very few people need, only fitting their specific workflows and scripts
- So highly personalized that no off-the-shelf software could ever quite fit
After all, building something from scratch just to serve yourself alone comes at a high cost, and it is practically guaranteed to be a loss. So these needs became a “forget it, I’ll make do” norm.
But AI has changed that. Creating something that serves only yourself is not completely free of cost, but it has dropped to a level where nearly anyone can try: as long as you can clearly describe your needs to an Agent, you can get something basically usable built. Just as the videos said, we will see a growing number of “software with only one user.”
So “everyone is a product manager” holds true in the AI era.
The misrepresentation: from “everyone can build products” to “everyone can make money”
But a problem follows. Big tech companies have taken this idea and twisted it in a way I think is wrong.
To sell their products, they’ve repackaged “AI lets every individual satisfy their personal needs at low cost” into something else: “Everyone can build products, therefore everyone can make money doing it.”
The essence of the former is need — your own, one-sided, personalized need. It doesn’t require assuming who the user is or who pays, because the person it serves is “me.” A thing that serves only yourself, as long as it genuinely solves your own problem, is a success — it has nothing to do with whether anyone pays for it.
The essence of the latter is monetization. It drags everything into marketplace logic: you have to build a product, find users, get distribution, and sell it. This path has nothing to do with “solving my own needs.” It’s just the old “everyone can get rich running an online store” narrative, repackaged in AI’s skin.
Summary
I very much agree with both creators. What will truly let Agents generate long-term value, I think, is the ability to solve problems that were previously too niche, too personal to be worth doing.
Isn’t this, after all, one of the ways AI can put people at the center?
