410: Building for the Age of AI Consumers

What It Covers

Software products must now serve AI agents that combine human-like exploration with machine speed, requiring new interfaces beyond traditional websites and APIs to handle flexible, unpredictable consumption patterns while managing security and cost risks.

Key Questions Answered

• •Rate Limiting for AI Features: Implement internal rate limits on any user-triggered AI functionality that costs money per request, capping usage to a few times per minute regardless of user count to prevent spending hundreds of dollars daily on unintended API consumption.
• •Model Context Protocol (MCP): Explore MCP as the first standardized attempt to make products accessible through large language models, enabling customers to integrate your service into their agentic workflows and conversational AI systems while maintaining structured programmatic access.
• •Session Definition Challenge: Traditional concepts like sessions, requests, and workflows become ambiguous with AI agents that pause for human approval mid-execution, requiring new frameworks to define boundaries between synchronous human interactions, asynchronous machine processes, and hybrid consumption patterns.
• •Domain Specific Languages: Flexible query systems like Elasticsearch's DSL and GraphQL offer infinitely configurable interfaces that AI agents need, allowing them to construct novel queries without requiring developers to implement new endpoints for every possible use case or data combination.