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Work shift

Software Made to Order

Coding agents are letting companies build software they would otherwise buy, while Microsoft readies agent-built apps for Power BI users and a start-up uses Claude to build Office-style rivals.

What is it?

Coding agents are turning part of the buy-or-build choice into a build. McKinsey’s survey finds employees skipping features they can make in-house, Microsoft readies agent-built apps for Power BI users, and ArtCraft uses Claude to build Office lookalikes; its Word alternative is pre-alpha. How far this reaches stays open.

Why now?

A McKinsey survey of more than 1,700 employees found nearly one-third decided against buying at least one software feature because they can now build it in-house. Microsoft’s Rayfin, which it says is designed to work with Claude Code, Codex and Copilot, was due in preview within weeks of 29 September.

Who’s building it?

Microsoft prepares the agent route, ArtCraft builds with Claude, and buyers’ own teams choose which features to make.

Microsoft RayfinArtCraftClaude CodeGitHub CopilotIn-house teams
The full read
Why now, who is building it, where the market goes, and what stays unsettled.
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01 · The market
Who’s in it
Builders — Microsoft, ArtCraft and in-house teams working with coding agents.
Buyers — enterprises weighing a purchased feature against one an agent could build.
Gatekeepers — developers and IT teams that Microsoft says take over apps users begin.
What’s at stake
Whether features that packaged software supplies become a build decision, as nearly one-third of McKinsey’s respondents report.
Whether apps built by agents reach everyday production use.
Whether Office-style rivals built with Claude become finished products.
What’s unsettled
Does a feature skipped in a survey become one built and kept?
Can ArtCraft’s Word alternative, now pre-alpha, reach everyday work?
How would courts treat clean-room reimplementations, which a lawyer says may well be litigated?
02 · How the demand matureda progression, not a timeline
Novelty
Microsoft says users instruct a coding agent to build and deploy an application.
Retention
Nearly a third of McKinsey’s respondents chose building over buying a feature.
Willingness to pay
Microsoft says Pro and Premium Per User customers get Fabric Apps at no extra cost.
Category arc
the line between dashboard and app fades, Microsoft says; buyers author what vendors packaged.
03 · Where the market goesthe forks, not a prediction
→Building becomes routine. Teams with coding agents make features they would otherwise buy, and vendors compete with in-house options.
→Vendors supply the builder. Platforms like Microsoft are preparing agent routes inside their own environments.
→The rivals mature. Reimplementations like ArtCraft’s become finished, reach feature parity and may meet litigation.
→Packages hold. Features get built, but suites remain the starting point.
The unsettled part is what follows the build: whether in-house features are kept up, handed to IT teams and used in production, or stay one-off projects.
04 · The Bespoke Default deskadjacent markets, moving now
The Agent Wrote the PR
Agents now write the code itself.
GitHub’s Copilot app, in technical preview, directs several agents at once
Help Net Security
Interfaces on Demand
Interfaces now assemble themselves for each request.
Preprint: generative UI can produce adapted interfaces at the point of use
arXiv
Post-App Phones
Google plans phone widgets users build by describing them.
Google plans vibe-coded widgets for Android users, TechCrunch reports
TechCrunch
05 · The Wire
01
Nearly a third skipped buying a feature they could build.
CIO Dive ↗
02
Microsoft plans coding-agent app-building for Power BI users.
The Register ↗
03
ArtCraft builds Office lookalikes with Claude; its Word version is pre-alpha.
The Register ↗
The panel on this signal
They agreed on
–Coding agents give buyers and platform vendors a way to make software features that packaged products supply.
–Microsoft is preparing its own agent route, inside Fabric.
–McKinsey’s finding concerns software features rather than whole products, and ArtCraft’s projects remain unfinished.
The platform analyst disagreed on
–Rayfin deploys inside Fabric, so a build decision may keep the buyer on Microsoft’s platform instead of freeing it.
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✦How this signal was built
01 · Panel
A Delphi panel of 4 AI analysts, each reasoning independently.
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02 · Debate
They challenge and revise each other’s reads over two rounds.
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03 · Evidence
Every claim is tied to a cited, linked source on The Wire.
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04 · Synthesis
A moderator writes it into one read, disagreement and all.