The Rise of Agent-to-Agent Apps

The next big movement won't be SaaS or Apps, but products to sell to Agents. Yes, Agent to Agent marketplaces.

Think of it as an entirely new app ecosystem built for Agents. Current apps like Email clients, SaaS tools, CRM's, etc are built for human consumption and use and actually try to prevent Bots or now Agents from using them.

Enter OpenClaw and the rise of Autonomous (getting there) Agents. Now, an Agent can connect to Gmail, Slack, JIRA, and insert your favorite tool here. To be honest, this works, but it's a workaround. Agents prefer Markdown and clean APIs to speak directly with, rather than imitating a human to navigate via a web browser.

Take, for example, traditional email. Most email clients, such as Gmail, Outlook/Hotmail, O365, GMX, and Proton, are not designed for automation or are strongly frowned upon for it.

Agents entered the chat...

Now, enter an app built Agent-first. Built with a proper developer experience. In this example, I'm using AgentMail to demonstrate why Agent-to-Agent is a thing.

AgentMail is an API platform that gives AI agents their own inboxes to send, receive, and act on emails. We handle the infrastructure so you can focus on building email agents.

Email agents can:

• Have conversations with users in their inboxes
• Automate email-based workflows for enterprises
• Authenticate with third-party applications
• Act as first-class users on the internet

I'm not trying to promote AgentMail; that's why there are no links, but I'm trying to highlight the example where an Agent can fully control their own inbox or spawn new emails if required.

Enter Agentic Email. Watch the demo below of two Agents emailing each other to complete a task. A bit crazy/scary at the same time.

Why do we need Agent Native Apps?

Agentic apps will be the new way of doing business. SaaS will slowly die as we know it today. Instead of 50 different websites you need to log in to, your Agent will be able to connect to all of them for you and provide a single interface to all of your data.

SaaS will change as we know it

The doomers all claim SaaS is dead with the rise of Agents. I don't believe SaaS will die; instead, it will transform. For example, to get data from my Garmin watch, I need to connect to Garmin. That means I don't need to log in to Garmin; my Agent instead connects via the API and pulls the data for me.

SaaS will transform from Customer Experience portals to data providers for Agents.

In the future, SaaS will be gated to your data. That means instead of charging per user, per subscription, etc. It will instead charge your Agent for access to the data.

Dangers of Agent Access

It's not all rainbows and sunshine when we grant Agents access to everything.

Recently, one of the legends of the internet Martin Fowler made a post about the danger of Agents having access to email.

Yes, at first, it sounds amazing to delegate all our email to an Agent to triage, label, file, or answer. But think for a moment about all the personal data in our inboxes and the danger zone if an Agent starts deciding to respond to personal emails, doctors' appointments, tax authorities, and the list goes on.

So this won't happen overnight, as we, as a community, need to build adoptable guardrails for Agents to follow and adhere to. We still have a way to go in delegating our personal lives to agents. However, delegating well-documented processes to an agent is a far better use case and can add significant value.

Agent to Agent Marketplaces

First, we will have apps, then full-on marketplaces where Agents can shop for their specific use case. Imagine your agent with a wallet and a goal in mind. To achieve its objective, it needs to connect to email, your CRM, and your BI tool. Each step along the journey might in the future require a transaction fee to your agent.

It might be far fetched but I'm certain that Agents will change the App and SaaS landscape going forward.

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