Thomas Ptacek, who recently left Fly.io to start a new venture, argues that artificial intelligence is reshaping the fundamental purpose of operating systems in ways the tech industry hasn’t yet fully grasped.
According to Ptacek, AI is dissolving the traditional boundaries between backend and frontend programming, web and native applications, and—most significantly—between programmers and users. “My Mac menu bar and task switcher are cluttered with icons for programs I conjured for myself, with English as my programming language,” he writes. “What I did on my computer, any power user can do on theirs.”
This shift raises a second-order question: if most users can generate custom applications to solve their specific problems, what role does a traditional operating system play? Ptacek argues that modern operating systems were designed primarily to partition different applications from each other and control how they communicate—a necessity in a world where users import all their software from third-party developers.
“That makes a lot of sense in a world where we’re importing all our software from strangers,” Ptacek writes. “It makes less sense in the world we’re heading to, where most of the software we’re carving up fiefdoms for has the same provenance.”
He envisions a future where most applications serve only one or two people, solving hyper-specific problems—like determining the weather in a particular Chicago neighborhood, or checking if a meeting is happening right now. Historically, such niche applications wouldn’t be commercially viable. But with AI as a building block, users could construct these tools themselves without programming knowledge.
Ptacek is currently working on a phone designed for this emerging world—a device that isn’t engineered to run fixed-function applications from professional developers, but rather one that builds custom apps on demand based on user requests. He acknowledges the skepticism such a vision deserves, noting that tech industry grand statements paired with startup announcements rarely pan out as predicted.
Key facts
- AI is collapsing the distinction between programmers and users, according to developer Thomas Ptacek
- Modern operating systems were designed to isolate third-party applications; this purpose becomes less relevant if users create their own software
- Ptacek argues most future software will serve audiences of just one or two people, solving hyper-specific problems that wouldn’t traditionally be commercially viable
- He is building a phone designed to generate custom applications on-demand rather than run pre-built applications from professional developers
- Every mainstream phone released in 2026 was planned in 2023, before AI’s potential impact was fully understood