{"path":"/beyond-the-application/the-disaggregation-of-software/software-slivers","content":{"title":"Software Slivers","summary":"Very narrow capabilities could become sustainable products when agents take over discovery, integration and operation.","body":"A *software sliver* is a small, specialised capability offered independently rather than as a feature inside a larger application.\n\nToday, narrow products can be hard to sell. Finding customers, explaining value, building onboarding, maintaining a UI and integrating with other applications may cost more than the problem justifies.\n\nAgents could lower many of those costs. If the capability is discoverable, understandable, callable and appropriately priced, an agent can select it precisely when needed.\n\nA specialist audio transformation, a document conversion operation or a narrowly focused analysis service might then compete on its own merits.\n\n## Disaggregation changes the competitive unit\n\nA large software suite has traditionally benefited from bundling: the customer is already there, the UI exists, and integration is built in. But when an agent can compose capabilities cheaply, a bundled feature must compete more directly with a specialist alternative.\n\nThis connects to [the different 10% problem](/beyond-the-application/the-disappearing-interface/the-different-ten-percent-problem). Instead of every customer carrying the same vast feature bundle, agents can select different combinations.\n\n## Not everything should be a sliver\n\nSmall pieces still have costs: latency, dependencies, billing, permissions, shared state and operational failure. Some functions genuinely work better together. A useful service boundary must account for those costs.\n\nThe thesis is not that all applications should be shattered into tiny services. It's that **the economically sensible size of a software product may decrease** as discovery and composition get cheaper.\n\nSee [Agents as Software Discoverers](/beyond-the-application/applying-intelligence-late/agents-as-software-discoverers) and [The Disaggregation of Software](/beyond-the-application/the-disaggregation-of-software)."}}