Services as software
Most paid work is a known sequence of steps. A Service sells the finished job, delivered by AI, with people where you want or need them, and buyers and their agents pay when it's done.
You know a kind of work people pay for: a filing, a return, a booked meeting, a reviewed claim. Most of it is a known sequence of steps. Gather the facts, draft, check, sign where the law says, file, and get paid. AI now does most of those steps well, and a review pass on every job costs cents. So the finished job, not the hour, is what you sell, and software can stand behind it.
The AI isn't what stands between you and that business. The glue is: a workflow engine, a review queue, a market of credentialed people, payments, payouts, a site, an API, an MCP server, docs and two portals, all before the first paid job. services.dev is that layer. One Service({...}) generates all of it, under your brand.
- AI delivers every job by default. With no
humanline, no person touches it. - People come in where you want or need them. A reviewer on the jobs a review flags, because you want one there. A signature only a credentialed person may give, because the work requires it. A credentialed step meets licensing by design.
- Buyers pay when it's done. People, and the agents that buy for them, order a finished job at a price. An agent can buy a job; it can't hire by the hour.
What comes in, what goes out and what it costs are required: leave price out and your editor says Property 'price' is missing. The rest defaults: delivered within 48 hours, charged on delivery or on the last submit step's receipt, done by AI with an adversarial review, and no person until you write human (every key). Every surface prints the terms they add up to:
translation · $49 per job, within 48 hours, charged on delivery.
terms Charged on delivery. Cancel at $0 until it ships. Send it back with a note and the AI redoes it, or you pay $0. Final 7 days after delivery.The market's word for this is an SLA. Here the terms aren't a document beside the work: they're written from the Service itself, so they can't say more than it does, and they grow with it. Add a signer and a registry filing, and the line reads:
filed-translation · $89 per job, within 48 hours, charged on file's receipt.
terms Charged on file's receipt. Cancel at $0 until file is done, except the work a person attested once the signature before file is done. Send it back with a note and the AI redoes it, or you pay $0. Final 7 days after delivery.| It isn't | Because | What a Service does with it |
|---|---|---|
| A tool the buyer runs | A tool hands the work back: the buyer still does the job, faster | Runs the tool as a step and sells the result |
| Hours of someone's time | Hours make the buyer manage the work | Prices the job, and pays a person per act at the steps you place them |
| A record or an answer from an API | Software and data sold as a service are building blocks: they answer one question and stop | Calls them as steps, with your code, a URL or a submission, and sells what they add up to |
| A queue of tasks for your team | A queue is how work moves inside a business, not what a buyer pays for | Keeps the queue inside the job, behind one price and one deadline |
A record can still be the whole Service when the record is the finished work: the Service submits the request, holds the order, and charges on the receipt.
Buyers and their agents order at any hour, AI delivers most jobs in minutes, and your margin grows as AI takes more of the steps.
Ask who holds the work until it's done. If the answer is the buyer, it's a tool, a feed or a team. If it's you, write it as a Service. Work AI finishes alone starts at your own Service. Work that needs a credentialed signature starts at the shape it resembles.
How a job runs: one order, carried through six stops from the first input to the last cent.