AI coding agents are changing where software value lives. Patent data shows why companies may build more of their own internal apps, and where IP strategy has to move.
Over the holiday break, I built three custom applications.
A voice assistant trained on 70+ podcast episodes that responds in a cloned voice.
A personalized fitness app that generates workouts based on my goals, equipment, and schedule—complete with timers and progress tracking.
An email agent that categorized my entire 2025 inbox and got me to inbox zero before the new year.
Welcome to the Personal OS era.
For 20 years, the software industry has operated on one model: search for an app, pay for a subscription, adapt your workflow to their platform.
That model is dying.
Coding agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and Replit are making it faster, cheaper, and better to build your own applications than to onboard someone else’s.
And the patent data shows this shift is accelerating.
I analyzed 7,127 patents in the low-code, no-code, and AI code generation space filed since 2020.
The growth is exponential:
46% growth from 2021 to 2025.
Patent filings in AI code generation have grown 46% since 2021
Forrester projects this market hits $52 billion by 2027.
95% of companies now use low-code or no-code tools.
25% of Y Combinator portfolio companies use “vibe coding” for initial development.
Who’s building the patent moat around your Personal OS?
Microsoft leads with 230 patents, building the GitHub Copilot empire
The startups are filing too:
The US leads with 41% of filings, but India is rising fast
Here’s what I believe:
In the next 12 months, you’ll see mass adoption of the “personal app store” approach.
People will stop searching for software and start describing what they want. The AI builds it. You own it. No subscription. No vendor lock-in. No feature requests that never get prioritized.
My wife and I are already using the fitness app I built daily. It does exactly what we need because I built it for us.
That podcast chatbot? It answers questions about invention and IP strategy using John Cronin’s voice, trained on four years of content. Try finding that on the App Store.
The shift from “search for an app” to “build your own app”
I know what you’re thinking: “What about security? Compliance? Enterprise features?”
Fair point. There’s a transition period.
Companies with data moats, security certifications, and compliance frameworks will have a competitive advantage for a while. Banks won’t let employees vibe-code their trading systems.
**But ** coding agents are getting better at security, testing, and compliance every month.
The moats are melting.
The SaaS companies betting on “our enterprise features will protect us” are running out of runway.
Stop building commodity features. If an AI can generate your core product in a weekend, you don’t have a business. Build around data, relationships, and outcomes that require human trust.
The next wave isn’t “AI-powered SaaS.” It’s “infrastructure for personal software creation.” Bet on the picks and shovels.
Your employees are already building shadow IT with ChatGPT and Claude. Get ahead of it. Create sandboxed environments. Establish governance. Turn it into a competitive advantage instead of a security nightmare.
Start experimenting. The cost of trying is near zero. The cost of waiting is watching others automate past you.
Coding agents have forecasted the death of software engineers for 18 months.
The recent hype around Opus 4.5 and Claude Code is bringing this reality closer every day.
I’m not saying engineers disappear. I’m saying the bar for “who can build software” just dropped to “anyone who can describe what they want.”
That changes everything.
The practical question is which rented workflow is worth owning first.
Data: Minesoft Origin patent database, 2020-2025 | Analysis: ipCapital Group
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Written by
Seth Cronin