A new software layer for the AI era

AI is making software abundant.

We need a better way to manage it.

AI coding tools have made it trivial to build tiny, highly specific applications. The problem is what happens afterward.

Habitat is the private application layer for the software organizations build themselves.

Currently exploring this with founders and AI-heavy engineering teams.

AACME
PK

Your software

24 apps23 healthy1 needs attention
Last scan 3s ago
Supplier Analyzer
Compare vendor pricing across quotes
Private·SSOOpen ↗
Invoice Reconciler
Match invoices with purchase orders
Private·SSOOpen ↗
Lead Cleaner
Normalize and dedupe CRM data
Private·SSOOpen ↗
Territory Mapper
Assign accounts to sales regions
Private·SSOOpen ↗
Release Dashboard
Track what shipped and what broke
Private·SSOOpen ↗
Logistics Planner
Route shipments against carrier SLAs
Private·SSOOpen ↗
Revenue Analyzer
Cohort revenue from billing exports
Private·SSOOpen ↗
Incident Analyzer
Summarize on-call incidents weekly
Private·SSOOpen ↗
Onboarding Tracker
Checklist for new-hire equipment and access
Private·SSOOpen ↗

Interactive concept. Hover an app, filter by department, click for details.

GitHub manages your code.Habitat manages the software you build.

The software problem

We are going to have more software than we know what to do with.

Previously
  1. Build software
  2. Deploy it
  3. Maintain it
Now
  1. Build software
  2. Build another
  3. Build another
  4. Build another…

AI made software cheap. Now we're going to have too much of it. Forgotten projects, random folders, repositories nobody remembers, deployments nobody owns, useful tools nobody knows exist.

The cost of creating software is falling below the cost of organizing it.

00 apps
watching…
running somewhereactively usedbrokenforgotten
The pile

This is what the software looks like today.

Desktops, downloads, forgotten repos, preview deployments, a cron job on someone's laptop. Real software, doing real work, with no home.

AACME · Application layer
invoice-tool~/Desktop
Finance
Invoice Reconciler
Private·SSO
supplier-analyzergithub · 3 stars
Operations
Supplier Analyzer
Private·SSO
test-dashboardvercel · preview
Operations
Ops Dashboard
Private·SSO
final-final-v2~/Downloads
Finance
Pricing Model
Private·SSO
crm-cleanerlocalhost:3001
Sales
CRM Cleaner
Private·SSO
pricing-script.pycron · 02:00
Finance
Price Sync
Private·SSO
ops-toolgithub · archived?
Operations
Shift Planner
Private·SSO
lead-importer~/code/old
Sales
Lead Importer
Private·SSO
new-dashboardvercel · public
Sales
Sales Dashboard
Private·SSO
temp-ai-appreplit
Legal
Contract Summarizer
Private·SSO
untitled-3~/Desktop
Engineering
Release Notes Bot
Private·SSO
dashboard copy 2~/Documents
Engineering
Incident Analyzer
Private·SSO

Chaos → Application layer

Same software. Now it has a name, an owner, a department, a status and a private URL.

Why existing infrastructure feels wrong

Most infrastructure assumes software should be public.

A developer builds a supplier price analyzer for three people in procurement. The URL should not be the primary primitive. The organization should be.

Traditional
6 steps
  1. 01
    Build
    Claude writes it in an afternoon.
  2. 02
    Deploy
    Push to a hosting platform.
  3. 03
    Public URLexposed
    Now it's on the internet.
  4. 04
    Add authentication
    Later. Maybe.
  5. 05
    Configure networking
    Allowlists, tunnels, env vars.
  6. 06
    Manage access
    Who has the link? Nobody knows.
Habitat
5 steps
  1. 01
    Build
    Claude writes it in an afternoon.
  2. 02
    Discover
    Habitat notices it exists.
  3. 03
    Private by defaultinternal only
    Reachable only inside your network.
  4. 04
    SSO
    Your identity provider, automatically.
  5. 05
    Share with the right people
    Procurement. Not the internet.

Public is a choice.
Private is the default.

Private networking doesn't magically solve security. It dramatically reduces unnecessary public exposure and attack surface. Public access becomes an explicit decision instead of an accident.

How it works

AI creates. Habitat does everything after.

No ports, no URLs, no deployment configs, no auth middleware. The developer builds. The organization gets an application.

  1. 01Build

    Claude, Cursor or Codex creates the application.

    $ claude
    > Build me a tool that compares supplier prices.
    ✓ Created supplier-analyzer
  2. 02Discover

    Habitat automatically finds it.

    scanning dev-macbook-rishi
    new application
    supplier-analyzer
    ~/code/supplier-analyzer · Node.js · port 3000
  3. 03Run

    Habitat figures out how to run it.

    runtimenode 22
    startnpm run start
    depsinstalled
    health200 /
  4. 04Share

    Give it a stable private URL.

    private network
    apps.acme.internal/suppliers
    shared with Procurement · 3 people
  5. 05Govern

    SSO, permissions, ownership, health and lifecycle.

    SSO · OktaOwner · RishiUsers · 8HealthyDeps · current
The moment it changes

From “I built a tool” to “my company has an application.”

rishi@dev-macbook — ~/code
$ claude
Waiting for an application…
Nothing was deployed.

The app runs where it was built, or wherever Habitat runs it. No public endpoint was created.

Nothing was configured.

No ports, no DNS, no auth middleware. The developer never left the terminal.

Something new exists.

A company application, with an owner, users, a status and a private URL.

Enterprise

Every internal application becomes a first-class company application.

Company Apps
9 shown · 24 total
Finance
Operations
Sales
Engineering
People
Operations
Supplier Analyzer

Compare vendor pricing across quotes

Owner
Rishi
Users
8
Health
Healthy
Access
Procurement Private·SSO
Repository
acme/supplier-analyzer
Runtime
Node.js 22
Last updated
2h ago
Built with
Claude Code
Identity provider
Okta · group: Procurementenforced

Enterprise deployments can automatically expose applications through the organization's identity provider, putting SSO and access control in front of software without requiring every developer to build it themselves.

OwnerEvery app has a human accountable for it.
UsersWho actually depends on this.
HealthUp, degraded, broken. Reportable by users.
AccessGroup-based, inherited from your IdP.
The bigger thesis

Software used to be scarce.

AI is making it abundant.

The bottleneck is moving.

From creating softwareto managing software.

When software becomes cheap enough to create for every niche workflow, organizations need a new layer for discovering, running, sharing, securing and maintaining what they've built.

Not a deployment platform. Not a code organizer. Not another observability tool. Those are components. The category is the application layer for the AI-built software era.
What Habitat could become

One home for everything your organization builds.

We're not pretending the product does all of this today. This is the shape of the opportunity if AI-generated internal software becomes as common as we think it will.

now next later
  1. Discovernow

    Find applications across machines, repos and infrastructure.

  2. Runnow

    Understand how it runs and run it. No manual ports or configs.

  3. Sharenow

    Stable private URLs over the organization's network or VPN.

  4. Securenext

    Private by default. SSO through your identity provider.

  5. Monitornext

    Know what's healthy. Let users report what isn't.

  6. Maintainlater

    Detect broken deps, expired credentials, drift. Let agents fix them.

Feedback

Is this actually a problem?

We're testing this thesis with founders, CTOs and teams building heavily with AI.

We want the honest version, especially if you think this is bullshit.

Tell us what you think Opens an email to rishisinghal92@gmail.com with the questions pre-filled.
  1. 01Do you already have a pile of small internal software?
  2. 02How do you currently run and share it?
  3. 03Do you feel like you have software you built but can no longer find?
  4. 04Would private-by-default deployment + SSO be useful?
  5. 05Which part of this feels most painful?
  6. 06Which part feels like a solution looking for a problem?