Agentic AI has the potential to change SaaS from software that users primarily operate into software that can increasingly perform bounded business outcomes on their behalf. That is a much more significant change than adding an AI assistant to an existing application. The transition affects product architecture, user experience, workflow design, security, permissions, pricing, customer expectations, and competitive strategy.

The history of agentic AI is a progression spanning more than seven decades of artificial intelligence research. Symbolic reasoning established computational problem solving, expert systems demonstrated knowledge-based decision-making, planning introduced goal-oriented action, intelligent-agent research formalized autonomy, and multi-agent systems explored cooperation between autonomous entities.