O'Reilly Author Proposes: Replacing Hardcoded Agent Workflows with Natural Language

JnBrymn · x · 2026-07-30

In a recent podcast, John Berryman, founder of Arcturus Labs and O'Reilly author, discussed the paradigm shift in software engineering in the AI era. He argues that the new programming language is English, the runtime is the agent, and the new software is "skills."

He strongly advises developers to "unharness" their agents from terminal or IDE constraints and introduces his Rook framework, designed to enable agents to act across applications, websites, and files. He advocates replacing bespoke workflow code with instructions written in plain English whenever the model is capable enough, suggesting that traditional orchestration frameworks like LangGraph will become unnecessary in many scenarios.

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