From Pages to Agents: How Intent-Driven AI Will Replace the Web as We Know It”

“Remember when you had to browse through pages to find what you needed? In the Post Web era, you won’t search, scroll, or click. Instead, you’ll simply state your intention—and AI agents will make it happen. No apps. No websites. Just action.”

The way we interact with the digital world is about to change forever. We’ve lived through Web1 (static pages), Web2 (interactive platforms), and now Web3 (decentralized control). But the Post Web is a whole new paradigm—one where autonomous AI agents act on our behalf.

Instead of searching through a page of flights, your AI agent will book the best one based on your preferences. Instead of visiting 10 different e-commerce sites, your agent will negotiate and secure the best deal automatically. No more navigating websites or apps. No more UX/UI. This is a shift from “content-first” design to “intent-first” design—where AI agents replace apps as the primary interface for human-computer interaction.

Why do I find this future interesting?

Well, Technologies are amazing when they do either of two things, a) they make experiences much better or b) they make our lives better. AI agents have the power to do this, and the way we interact with the Web is the number one topic that is ripe for a better experience.

Whereas the Web, and search engines, offered us the possibilities to have the world's knowledge on our fingertips, it has become an untamable beast. We have gotten used to old browsers and we have gotten used to pretty terrible user experiences. As we were just about to accept that reality, AI innovators jumped in and showed us that a new reality will change all that.

AI-agents will greatly enhance our experiences when interacting with any website, and it will make our lives much more pleasant at the same time. This is why this technology will change consumers lives forever.

The End of Pages and the Rise of Agent-Driven Experiences

From Page-Based Interfaces to Agent-Based Experiences

For decades, the internet was driven by pages. Pages were the starting point for everything: content, search, purchases, and interactions. Companies fought to make the most optimized pages with the best UX/UI design. We’ve seen beautiful product pages, infinite scroll, and chatbots embedded in page elements.

But what if you didn’t have to visit the page at all?

In the Post Web, pages give way to agents. These agents operate on your intent. When you want a flight, you don’t “Google” it. You tell your agent, “Book me a flight to Tokyo under $500 next Friday,” and it gets it done. No forms. No pages. No apps.

You will not even have to type anything anymore, as these agents act based on voice commands, and share the outcome in voice as well. It will be almost like you are speaking to your own personal PA.

For businesses, this is a paradigm shift. Why build pages for users to visit if their agents handle everything? The battle for SEO and user experience (UX) design might become irrelevant in an agent-driven world. Instead, companies will need to ensure their services are “agent-compatible”—that their data, pricing, and APIs are ready to interact with autonomous AI agents.

It won't take long before we see the first successful 'no website' Agent-centric businesses appear. Skyscanner becomes SkyAgent, eBay becomes AgentBay and Shein will become even more powerful as SheinAI will allow Tiktok users to instruct their agents by voice or video "Get me the same pants that Jochem is wearing in his latest TikTok video for under $45".

Intent-Driven Design: How the Web Will Center Around User Intent

Web Pages React. Agents Act.

Today, websites, search engines, and platforms wait for you to make a move. You type a query, and they give you results. This paradigm is fundamentally reactive. But with intent-driven agents, this dynamic flips.

Intent-driven design means that users set an intent (“I want X”), and the system fulfills it autonomously.

• No forms
• No filters
• No endless scrolling
• No manual login
• No 'accidentally emptying your shopping cart'
• No website bugs
• No time lost

Consider this: Instead of visiting e-commerce sites, you’ll simply state your preferences:

“I need a gift for my 10-year-old nephew under $50 that ships by Thursday.”

Your agent will find it, compare prices, and order it.

Be where the agents are

For businesses, this shift is monumental. In the agent-driven future, success won’t be about optimizing your website’s experience. Instead of having top-quality UX, the main focus will be about ensuring your products, services, and prices are visible to autonomous AI agents.

Interestingly, if we consider how brands grow, and that the two most important success factors of brand growth are a) Physical Availability and b) Mental Availability, we see that these core principles that lead to success actually do not change. Product distribution and availability (having great distribution resources) still matters, being able to be found and used by agents is still of the highest importance (new kind of mental availability, I suppose).

It is yet to be seen how important it is to have a strong brand name though, as every company that opens doors to AI-agents will eventually be a tech company.

Perhaps an opportunity for business? A Shopify wholesaler kind of thing that is optimized for AI-agent interaction?

In this intent-first world, marketing, UX, and product discovery will change forever. If agents choose which product is “best” based on user intent, companies must compete on real value, quality, and pricing transparency, so perhaps the quality of their copy and ads become less important.

The winners of the Post Web era will be the companies that make their offerings most accessible to autonomous agents—not the ones with the flashiest websites.

For the last 20 years, UX designers have focused on creating the perfect experience on websites and apps. But in a world of intent-driven design, UX becomes irrelevant. When autonomous agents interact on your behalf, your app’s UI doesn’t matter.

So when you do decide to prepare for this new post-web era, keep the following in mind in your design:

• APIs, Not Pages: Businesses will compete to have the best data pipelines, not the best websites.
• Price Transparency: If agents prioritize “value for money,” brands will have to make prices clear.
• Performance-Driven SEO: The new “SEO” is agent visibility. Your services must be agent-readable and agent-negotiable.
• Composability: Companies will have to become part of a larger “ecosystem” of services, where agents can interoperate.

Where Apps and Websites End, Agents Begin.

If you think of apps and websites as tools for achieving goals, think of agents as assistants that achieve goals for you. Apps provide interfaces that allow you to complete a task; agents complete the task on your behalf.

Let me spin-up some quick examples (It is my hope that you will leave more examples in the comments):

• E-commerce: Agents negotiate product prices, purchase goods, and arrange delivery—all without a website visit.
• Travel: Agents search, book, and negotiate rates for hotels, flights, and rental cars.
• DeFi and Finance: Agents manage investments, rebalance portfolios, and search for arbitrage opportunities across DeFi protocols.
• Creative Work: Agents create, post and manage original content, such as marketing copy, video scripts, and images, on command.
• Job Marketplaces: Agents apply for jobs on your behalf, matching you with the AI agents of potential employers and negotiating salaries.

With each of these examples, think about the amount of compute power required to support these interactions. Training and operating AI agents to work across different data systems, APIs, and workflows requires massive compute capacity. But where will this power come from?

That’s where Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs) like Aethir enter the picture.

Why Decentralized Compute Is Essential for the Post Web

Agents Run on Compute. Compute Runs on Aethir.

We are currently seeing a large influx of amazing Autonomous AI agents and scale-ups that are building them. The largest ones are often backed by extremely large investments from VCs. The reason? Building AI is expensive, and one of the main costs comes from heavy compute needs.

In previous posts I already explained how decentralization and with that decentralization of compute (what we do at Aethir) matters and closes the AI-Wealth gap. In short, Aethir gives access to top-quality compute to the world of AI-builders against a fraction of the price that cloud-centric businesses offer. This allows agent-driven ecosystems to scale at a speed that was previously unimaginable!

Some reasons why this decentralized infrastructure matters are:

1. Cost Efficiency: Running autonomous agents requires constant inference and computation. Centralized cloud providers charge high fees for this. Aethir’s decentralized GPU network offers cheaper, flexible, pay-as-you-go GPU compute.
2. Scalability: Aethir allows projects to add up compute as more agents enter the system.
3. Independence: Unlike centralized cloud providers, Aethir doesn’t control the data centers in the network. It’s distributed, providing maximum autonomy for AI developers and Post Web innovators.
4. Future Proof: With Aethir Edge devices people will even be able to 'own' their own small AI-agents on their home devices, providing a privacy first infrastructure for every single user.

Lets connect

Are you ready for the Post Web shift? If you’re building the next-gen agents that will replace pages with intent-driven systems, now is the time to prepare. Explore how Aethir’s decentralized GPU infrastructure can support your next big idea.