AI makes software headless. Attention businesses resist becoming headless.
- Agents make the human UI optional: system of record → API → agent → human.
- CRM can tolerate this. Its value survives when an agent becomes the interface: the database, business logic, permissions and workflows still matter.
- LinkedIn has the opposite incentive. If agents can read and act on the network for you, you no longer need to scroll the feed. The feed is the attention business.
- So LinkedIn's walled UI isn't incidental. Its economics make the transition to an agent-native, headless network structurally difficult.
- Substrate is the escape valve: a social system of record designed to be headless from day one. Human → agent → substrate → agent → human.
- #agents
- #api-design
- #headless
- #substrate