Software That Adapts to You

I've been thinking about how our expectations of software might change, and seeing Claude roll out its Mods feature last week got me thinking: what if software becomes much more adaptable to whoever is using it?

Instead of waiting for a developer to add a feature to the roadmap, you just ask for it:

• "Give me an interactive graph of my weekly stats showing what changed."
• "Build a bulk-editing tool with a preview before changes apply."
• "Add a five-stage progress indicator to each customer record."
• "Add a dark mode" 😉

The challenge is defining the boundaries. What can users change, and how do you keep custom features reliable, secure and intuitive?

Software like After Effects, Figma and VS Code have utilised extensions and plugins for years, so it's definitely achievable using those patterns. And with AI lowering the technical barrier to creating them, I think this pattern could expand considerably into less technical applications.

Perhaps the job shifts from anticipating every possible need to building a solid foundation that users can adapt themselves.

There's an interesting competitive angle here, too. What if the ability to customise an app becomes one of its biggest differentiators?

Originally posted on LinkedIn.