Synthèse
“Bolt-on” already sounds like an insult. Nobody wants to admit they did it. Atlassian did it on purpose. Two and a half years ago they were one of the first B2B vendors to put agents into the platform, and they added an agent step into an existing Jira automation workflow. Arguably the best thing they did, because they had no idea where the market was going and bolting on let them learn fast. What they learned: customers immediately went past single agents into branching, conditions, and multi-a
“Bolt-on” already sounds like an insult. Nobody wants to admit they did it. Atlassian did it on purpose. Two and a half years ago they were one of the first B2B vendors to put agents into the platform, and they added an agent step into an existing Jira automation workflow. Arguably the best thing they did, because they had no idea where the market was going and bolting on let them learn fast.
What they learned: customers immediately went past single agents into branching, conditions, and multi-agent chains. A ticket fires, an agent picks it up, a marketing agent talks to Canva to generate assets, a social agent posts them. Customers were automating workflows they already had. That pushed Atlassian to a principle that now governs the whole portfolio: every problem you solve for humans, you solve for agents. Humans need tools, context, goals, accountability, and awareness of what teammates are doing.
So do agents. The primitives are nearly identical. Anything you can do with a human, you should be able to do with an agent, and if a design breaks that rule, the team has to justify why. For new products, reimagine. For existing products with users and workflows, bolt on and evolve.
Both.