The Software Lens
Software architecture for the age of AI agents: what changes when the main user of a system is no longer a person, which patterns survive, and what to build instead. Written for CTOs, architects and engineering leaders who want the structure, not the slogan.
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Short video essays, one question per episode. Each episode has a written companion in the library below.
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Every article and episode, in reading order. Filter by series or search below.
What The Software Lens is
The Software Lens is a research series and video channel on software architecture for the age of AI agents, written and presented by Imtiaz Hassan, a technical architect. It exists because the same architectural questions kept arriving on real engagements and deserved a proper answer rather than a slide: what actually changes when software begins to reason at call time, which existing patterns survive that change, and which quietly stop working.
The work is published in four parts, in sequence. Foundations establishes what separates a service from an agent and traces the seventy-year arc of boundary changes that led here. SaaC sets out Software as a Capability — why per-seat pricing, UI-first product and integrate-once contracts all break when the primary caller is an agent, and what replaces them. AIM — Agents, Intelligence, MCP — describes where the seams go once microservice boundaries stop fitting. The Agentic Economy covers moats, regulation and the settlement artefact once agents transact with each other.
None of it is gated. There is no signup, no newsletter and no PDF to trade an email address for. I publish it because writing something down is how I make sure I understood it. The ideas are applied in practice by the R&D team at Aitina Tech.
Everything, in one place
Every article and video episode in reading order: Foundations first, then SaaC, AIM and the Agentic Economy. New pieces are published regularly; each episode has a written companion.