Key Takeaways

  • Software interfaces are shifting from static, pre-written codebases toward transient screens built at the exact second a user needs them.
  • Christina Cacioppo reveals that Vanta is rolling out agent-generated user interfaces this summer to eliminate static configuration menus.
  • The emerging product architecture pairs a chat assistant on the left side of the screen with a dynamic canvas on the right that renders bespoke tables and views.
  • Custom reporting tools fail when they force customers to learn SQL or tweak dozens of filter knobs; agents should assemble the custom interface on demand.

The Death of Five-Year-Old Codebases

John Collison framed a simple question during his conversation with Christina Cacioppo: “Why are you using software that someone coded five years ago rather than just the computer deciding what to render to you at that moment?”

For two decades, SaaS companies built product moats around complex setting pages, deep navigation trees, and custom report builders. You logged into a tool, adjusted six dropdowns, selected table columns, and hoped the database returned the exact view you wanted. When users needed something slightly different, engineering teams wrote more components, adding weight to codebases that grew harder to maintain every quarter.

Cacioppo realized that this model creates friction in compliance and governance tools. Users do not log into compliance software because they enjoy configuring tables. They log in because they have a specific audit, vendor check, or risk assessment to complete right now. Forcing those users to learn your custom filter logic or write SQL queries is a failure of product design.

The Split-Screen Canvas Pattern

Vanta is tackling this by building interfaces that assemble themselves dynamically. Instead of routing users through menus, an AI agent interprets the user's intent and generates a single-use interface.

Cacioppo describes the mental model directly: “having an agent that maybe is guiding you through the process or doing something and then needs the user to render an opinion or make a connection or do something. You're like, can the agent just generate UI specific for that task, so the user completes it and then move on?”

In practice, this creates a split-screen pattern. The left side handles conversational context and intent. The right side acts as an active workspace. As Cacioppo explains: “You can imagine a data table with a view and columns rather than just customizing it, you're like, 'No, I just want you to do this thing, and I will take over that right-side canvas of the page, generate the UI for the thing, or generate the report.'”

Consider reporting. “Actually, reporting is another, I think, great case,” Cacioppo notes. “It's like no one wants more knobs and whistles on their reporting tool. Also, no one really wants to learn SQL. I want to report for this, go, generate it.”

When will this model hit production? Cacioppo gave a clear timeline: “When will we be seeing generated UI in Vanta? This summer.”

What to Do With This

Open your product's analytics and locate your three most complex filtering or reporting pages. If users spend more than 45 seconds adjusting dropdowns before seeing value, prototype a two-column layout: put a lightweight LLM agent on the left to interpret user intent, and let it render a clean, single-purpose React component on the right. Stop coding settings pages that only 5% of your customer base will ever touch.