Dana Lawson is CTO at Netlify, where she leads a platform that takes code from idea to production in a few clicks. Before Netlify, she held engineering leadership roles at GitHub, New Relic, and InVision — always in the developer tools space, always with the same mission: make it easier to build great digital experiences.
In this conversation, Dana introduces the idea of agent experience (AX) — a new discipline that sits between user experience and developer experience. APIs, CLIs, and websites were designed for humans. Agents are different: they need context, explicit instructions, and systems that can handle autonomous behaviour. She argues that companies building for the next decade need to rethink how their products are accessed, not just by people, but by synthetic users buying, clicking, and deploying on our behalf.
We also discuss Netlify's agent runners, a feature that lets non-technical stakeholders iterate on live websites through a chat interface, and the risks of consolidating internet access in the hands of a few foundational model providers. Dana makes the case for championing the open web, building guardrails instead of walls, and ensuring developers remain stewards of safety as the barrier to building drops.
A practical, grounded take on what changes when agents become your new customer.