What Dries got right about agencies, and what comes next for software. In July 2025, Dries Buytaert published AI and the great digital agency unbundling . If you build software for a living, run an agency, or buy from one, you should read it. The argument is precise. AI is collapsing the cost of producing the things agencies have historically charged hours for. Code, copy, design, configuration. The work that used to take a team of seven and three months now takes a team of two and three weeks. The agencies that survive will rebundle around what AI cannot easily do. Strategy. Governance. Outcomes. Long-term operations. Dries is right. In the market, we saw agency revenue decline in the first quarter of 2026. Across the European agency market, the pattern is the same shape. The price of the underlying labour is collapsing on a curve that does not flatten in 2027. But the essay is, in a way, the first half of a longer story. The same dynamic that is unbundling agencies is also unbundling software.…