Dharmesh Shah coins AUX — Agentic User Experience — as a distinct design discipline: “The companies that succeed in the agentic era are those that take a thoughtful approach to designing an agentic user experience.”
His key argument against the “just wrap it in MCP” approach: “You don’t just wrap your existing APIs into an MCP server and call it a day.” And against computer use as the answer: “If all they wanted to do was use them like humans do, we have ‘computer use’ for that.”
This means AUX is neither human UX adapted for agents (computer use) nor raw APIs exposed to agents (MCP wrapper). It’s a third thing — interfaces designed specifically for how agents want to consume and operate software. The ergonomics differ from both human interfaces and programmatic APIs.
The progression Dharmesh describes at HubSpot: “Being agentic is not just about agents running on our platform, it’s about agents running our platform (being able to operate it). That’s how you take AI from being a simple tool to a savvy teammate.”
This is the ON → RUNNING distinction: agents as users of the platform vs. agents as operators of the platform. The second requires the platform to be designed for autonomous operation, not just automated access.
Connects to B2B becomes B2A — agents become the buyer — when agents run the platform, they’re also the purchasing decision-maker. Also connects to The UI moat collapses — API quality becomes the purchasing criterion — AUX is the new competitive surface that replaces both UI and raw API.