# Citizens Build, Agents Execute, Experts Govern

DevFeed: [Citizens Build, Agents Execute, Experts Govern](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/citizens-build-agents-execute-experts-govern-4438.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://martinfowler.com/rachels-ramblings/citizens-agents-experts.html>)

Author: Rachel Laycock (rlaycock@thoughtworks.com)

Published: 2026-08-19T18:30:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Martin Fowler](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/martin-fowler.md>)

Topics: [AI-assisted coding](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-assisted-coding.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [apps](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/apps.md>), [enterprise](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/enterprise.md>), [production](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/production.md>), [rachels-ramblings](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rachels-ramblings.md>), [software-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineering.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that AI makes it easier for more people to build working applications, but this is not equivalent to engineering enterprise software. Once a system becomes business-critical, concerns such as data protection, resilience, maintainability, auditability, and scale become central.

## Source excerpt

TL;DR Why building an app over the weekend isn't the same as building enterprise software I've noticed an interesting gap opening up over the last six months. It isn't really a gap in technology. It's a gap in what different people think software engineering actually is. The conversation usually starts the same way. A non-techie, maybe an executive, tells me about something they've built over the weekend. Sometimes it's a chatbot. Sometimes it's an internal workflow. Sometimes it's a surprisingly polished application that solves a real business problem. They're excited, and they should be. Twelve months ago they probably couldn't have built it at all. Then comes the question. "If AI can do this now, why aren't our engineering teams delivering ten times faster?" It's a perfectly reasonable question, after all we've all seen the demos. The first thing that would come to my head is "you don't know what it takes to build enterprise grade software". But then I think about what I mean and how to explain it to a non-technical person without sounding super patronising. And then it hit me, we did this to ourselves. We've spent so many years banging on about how to write good software that everyone has assumed writing software is the same as software engineering. The application someone builds over the weekend is real software. It likely solves a real problem or demonstrates an idea. Sometimes it's genuinely impressive. I don't want to diminish that because I think one of the most exciting things AI has done is dramatically increase the number of people who can turn ideas into working software. That's cool, I totally get it. The first apps and "hello worlds" I ever built excited me enough to choose this as an actual career so the excitement is real and I don't want to temper it too much. But your first hello world, which these days can be an entire app with all kinds of features, is very, very (extra very on purpose) different from introducing software into a production envir