# AI interfaces are shifting toward composability

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-interfaces-are-shifting-toward-composability/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Asha Sharma](https://realalpha.app/people/asha-sharma/) · Asha Sharma is chief vice president of product for Microsoft's AI platform. · Ran Microsoft's CoreAI product org and Instacart's operations before leading Xbox, after scaling Messenger at Meta.
- Host: [Lenny Rachitsky](https://realalpha.app/people/lenny-rachitsky/) · Host, Lenny's Podcast · Spent seven years at Airbnb; his product newsletter has over 1M subscribers.
- Show: Lenny's Podcast
- Episode: [How 80,000 companies build with AI: Products as organisms and the death of org charts | Asha Sharma](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/), Aug 28, 2025
- Moment: 16:17 to 20:23 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-interfaces-are-shifting-toward-composability/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=977

## Quote

> “I think that there's a bunch of trends that are kind of working in the favor for like the future of products being about **composability and not the canvas**.”
> — [Asha Sharma](https://realalpha.app/people/asha-sharma/) at [17:09](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=1029) · Lenny's Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Databases moved from desktop apps to SQL; cloud moved from consoles to Terraform.
2. Text streams work naturally with LLMs and agents.
3. Chat is useful, but it is not the only interface people need.

## About this segment

Asha Sharma sees interfaces moving from GUIs toward text and code because they connect naturally to models. Builders should design for composition and agent use, not just polished screens.

From “How 80,000 companies build with AI: Products as organisms and the death of org charts | Asha Sharma”, Aug 28, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[16:23](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=983) stuff. Okay. Along these lines, something else that you told me that you've been noticing that I want to hear more about is the shift from GUIs, and you kind of referenced this, from GUIs to code-native interfaces. Talk about what that means, what that looks like, and what this means for folks building products. I think it kind of goes back to what does it mean to kind of be a product maker in the future. I think that everybody's instinct is a GUI, but if you kind of think back in history, like databases kind of went from the desktop kind of down into SQL. I think cloud was all about consoles and now it's about Terraform. And so I think we're literally just seeing the same pattern that's played out in history start to play out in AI and like everything else in AI, it's like Moore's law and it's getting faster. And so I think that's

[17:09](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=1029) just accelerating. And if you think about like a stream of text just connects better with LLMs. And so I think that there's a bunch of trends that are kind of working in the favor for like the future of products being about composability and not the canvas. And I think that product makers really need to rewire their mindset around this because I think we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the UI of something rather than how something composes, how an agent's going to be able to read something, how do you actually get infinite scale, how does that collaboration start to work. And so I think it's just a new way of thinking, even though it's long been a trend that's happened in these changes.

[17:49](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=1069) So is the prediction here that it's terminals, like cloud code sort of experiences, or is it that it's agents that are taking it, or is it both? Is that kind of what you're just saying? Yeah, I do. I mean, look, if any of us knew, that would be amazing. I just think that the reason why terminals are great and it feels really great when you code is because of the way you can interact with an LLM with the text stream.

[18:14](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=1094) And I think that both can be true, that humans will continue to commit code and we'll find, you know, new ways to actually do that, whether it's in the IDE, whether it's in, you know, co-pilot, whether it's in, you know, some new development environment. And I think that we'll do that with agents and agents will do that with each other and we'll continue to kind of evolve from there. We had Brett Taylor in the podcast, founder of Sierra, and he had a similar prediction that all software companies are going to become agent companies.

[18:43](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=1123) and it's essentially what you're saying here is that like your software will just be this thing that's running in the background and there's much less of a GUI. Do you think it still becomes like this chat interface the way we're kind of getting used to? Is that like the primary interface with agents or is anything something else happening? Look, like I think that conversation is a really powerful interface.

[19:01](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=1141) I worked on messaging. I think it's great for lots of forms of communication, but it's not the only form of communication. I mean, we use email today to collaborate with each other. we use docs, like everybody uses Word and PowerPoint. You know, there's a billion people living in places of artifacts that I think can become really important composable pieces of the picture. And I think they should be. So I'm excited about that. I think that chat will be important, but certainly not sufficient. What's interesting is ChatGPT, the number one fastest growing product of all time maybe the most important consequential product of all time is chat yeah it's great it works um i think the question we have to ask ourselves is will it only always be chat yeah yeah the way nick described it is uh we're in the ms dos era of uh of chat

[19:55](https://realalpha.app/v/J9UWaltU-7Q/?t=1195) gpt and there's a which is interesting it's like the reverse of what you're saying so it's like maybe if you start is that and then you have to move to GUI and then maybe it'll go back. But he said there's gonna be like a Windows version where it's much easier to understand what the hell is going on. Yeah, I mean, look, like, I think that it's, it's smart, you should, every company should be bringing AI to where their users are. And ChatGPT has all their users using chat and it's a phenomenal