The Shift

There is a growing narrative that AI will replace SaaS. The argument usually goes something like this: if software can perform work autonomously, then we no longer need software tools. Instead of Software-as-a-Service, we’ll move toward "Service-as-Software" systems that simply deliver outcomes. This framing seems compelling, but it misunderstands what SaaS actually is.

Documentation today is no longer created, published, and consumed in isolation. It’s more like tossing a message in a bottle into the ocean, except the ocean is your organization, the bottle might get opened by an AI, and someone three departments over is using your carefully worded explanation to answer a question you never imagined.

For a long time, documentation followed software. Products were designed, built, and shipped. Then documentation came afterward. Today, software is designed and built while documentation is created in parallel, and both ship together. Documentation is no longer cleanup work. It’s part of delivery.