We’re only two months in, but 2026 is already shaping up to be the year of agents. The current surge began with Claude Code, which achieved critical mass over the holidays. That led to all kinds of lobster-themed software names (long story), which culminated in OpenClaw, an open-source agent creation and management system. It might also be a stealth marketing campaign for Apple to sell a ton of Mac Minis, but that’s neither here nor there.
It’s too early to say what kind of productivity gains the current wave of agents will create, but the push to agents is undeniable. It’s also very exclusive. For all the talk of, “the only coding language you need to know is English,” there are technical barriers to joining this wave. You don’t necessarily need to know how to code in order to use OpenClaw, but it helps considerably.
To help non-coders overcome some of the technical barriers to building and working with agents, AI companies have begun to release products that abstract away some of the more difficult parts. Anthropic released Claude Cowork—essentially Claude Code for the rest of us. More recently, Perplexity launched Computer, its “general-purpose digital worker” that users can prompt in natural language and watch it go to work.
It all sounds magical, and if you squint, you might even see a near future where knowledge work, and especially editorial work, transforms: instead of pulling levers on various software menus and dashboards, you’ll just talk to agents. They’ll handle the hard stuff, and if they run into barriers, you’ll just ask another agent to build the solution.
Where no code gets real
Back in reality, it’s not that simple. Even if you use one of the no-code systems like Claude Cowork, creating tools and workflows still involves breaking down processes, finding API keys, navigating permissions, and iterating continuously. And even though Anthropic markets Claude Cowork for non-coders, when I used it, the app gave me instructions that included using the Terminal on my Mac—an app that most people have no idea exists. And if you don’t, you probably shouldn’t mess with it.
For builders, these don’t even qualify as barriers. Builders don’t need to be coders, but they do have characteristics that most workers don’t: They seek to understand the process beneath their tasks, and treat that process as modifiable and programmable. More importantly, they see failure and iteration as tolerable, even fun. They thrive in uncertainty.
But the reality is most people don’t think that way. We’ve trained a generation of office workers to work within software with clear boundaries and reusable templates. If there’s an issue, they call IT. Any feature request gets filtered and, if you’re lucky, put on a roadmap that pushes it out 6-12 months.
