/AI7h ago

OpenAI's Will Depue proposes private, agent-driven user interfaces that bypass traditional web apps by querying unbundled open protocols

This could turn online ads into visual prompt injections

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#214swyx
will depue
Herbie Bradley
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Original post
will depue@willdepue#249inAI

i really don't know what's going to happen to software in the future

some musings on a long flight:

i kinda just want to live in my beautiful custom software garden, touch no interface i don't control, just APIs and the agents i envoy to the comparably obscene unrestricted web. a digital immune system

i'm sure apps will just block this aggressively, unclear how successfully. there's some unlikely beautiful web2 world where everyone's individual ecosystem just receives the news/twitter/meta/etc. firehose and runs their own personal filtering & content system

it's unclear what social platforms survive in a fully custom/generative ui world. migration becomes a lot easier, i can both read + post across many without effort, and so can everyone else. obviously, there's a lot of format and culture to platforms, but these might get unbundled into protocols?

i just want: 1) most of the time, everything just comes through message + visual from my AI executive assistant. no other interface needed. voice input 2) just one messaging & mail app, can multiplex across platforms 3) every morning, a cross-platform social media brief 4) and if i want to go deeper, the appropriate social media specific interface but removed of ads, distractions, negative features 5) no need to reinvent the rest, i guess, but then again most apps suck. i just want good transcription in apple notes. spotify recs, music search, social could be so much better. i can't stand the new apple photos interface...

portability and collaboration are big issues for custom software, for sure, but these could be solved with more open protocols, and migration effort is vastly diminished anyways

there's some fear that, with a generative internet, the ai labs end up polluting the commons of god's chosen business (advertising) which supports the technology industry that they emerged from? maybe it doesn't matter at that point

ai video people occasionally talk about how you could at some point just live generate your entire computer with a video model. don't see why you would though really

1:59 PM · Jun 4, 2026 · 22.3K Views
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swyx@swyx

i really wish i had the time to write up an essay about why this is both a dream of many ai people and yet people keep voting with their feet to live in worlds owned by others

tldr you want to switch environs the same way you dont always want to stay home. the same way people go to starbucks to write or to meet, go to Burning Man to do things they could do in the neighborhood park, go to an omakase restaurant where you have no choice vs another where you have 5000 choices

will depue@willdepue

i really don't know what's going to happen to software in the future

some musings on a long flight:

i kinda just want to live in my beautiful custom software garden, touch no interface i don't control, just APIs and the agents i envoy to the comparably obscene unrestricted web. a digital immune system

i'm sure apps will just block this aggressively, unclear how successfully. there's some unlikely beautiful web2 world where everyone's individual ecosystem just receives the news/twitter/meta/etc. firehose and runs their own personal filtering & content system

it's unclear what social platforms survive in a fully custom/generative ui world. migration becomes a lot easier, i can both read + post across many without effort, and so can everyone else. obviously, there's a lot of format and culture to platforms, but these might get unbundled into protocols?

i just want: 1) most of the time, everything just comes through message + visual from my AI executive assistant. no other interface needed. voice input 2) just one messaging & mail app, can multiplex across platforms 3) every morning, a cross-platform social media brief 4) and if i want to go deeper, the appropriate social media specific interface but removed of ads, distractions, negative features 5) no need to reinvent the rest, i guess, but then again most apps suck. i just want good transcription in apple notes. spotify recs, music search, social could be so much better. i can't stand the new apple photos interface...

portability and collaboration are big issues for custom software, for sure, but these could be solved with more open protocols, and migration effort is vastly diminished anyways

there's some fear that, with a generative internet, the ai labs end up polluting the commons of god's chosen business (advertising) which supports the technology industry that they emerged from? maybe it doesn't matter at that point

ai video people occasionally talk about how you could at some point just live generate your entire computer with a video model. don't see why you would though really

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