As CTO of NovioQ I speak a lot to our enterprise customers about software development in the Age of Agents.
In the boardroom there is a lot of buzz about AI, both generative AI and agentic AI and what long-terms choices to make in the rapidly evolving IT world we live in today.
One of the questions I get is whether AI will make low-code platforms obsolete.
To be cleart from the start: the answer is a firm “No”. Especially OutSystems, a platform that has been embracing AI for years, is a perfect match.
This article explains how AI and OutSystems complement and amplify each other’s value.
As said, OutSystems has already embraced AI for a long time. Mentor, OutSystems’ genAI helper, creates apps through prompting, much like other genAI tooling.
The enterprise game-changer is that OutSystems genAI creates a low-code model.
Once you are happy with the AI-generated blueprint and publish the app, the actual code generated is deterministic, which is a key differentiator with AI-generated code – which is non-deterministic.
This means that you only need to test the model, you don’t need to validate every line of code generated.
Compared to AI generated code, the AI model is easily readable and maintainable by a human developer.
This is highly valuable, because AI still cannot design and build fully functional enterprise-grade, transactional apps autonomously.
On top of that, OutSystems comes with all the functionality to support the full SDLC of your apps:
deployment, versioning, quality checks, testing, auditing and monitoring, easily integrated with compliance tools like Splunk or Datadog.
OutSystems and AI together are even more powerful and valuable when it comes to agentic AI and that is where the real value of AI is today.
OutSystems excels in building agents that deliver real value.
The platform delivers guardrails, evals, MCP server connectivity, agentic workflows with humans in/on the loop, testing, monitoring, token control, auditing and world-class security all in the same platform, with only one skillset needed to make this work.
To top it off, what adds even more value is the OutSystems Enterprise Context Graph.
Most agentic projects struggle because the models are context unaware.
OutSystems solves that problem and uses the Enterprise Context awareness to generate and run agents that understand your business concepts.
The Enterprise Context Graph also creates a viable path to use AI to build apps with real business value, using your core IT systems.
The central IT team will build and manage OutSystems building blocks that expose core functionality, like CreateSalesOrderInSAP, or ReceiveOpportunityStatusFromSalesforce.
These modules can only be managed by the central team but reused in any app by other developers, giving you full control over access to your core systems, including throttling, performance and security.
If you would then prompt:
OutSystems will build a fully functional app, using the centrally managed components for sales order create and opportunity status change and create the screens and logic, as well as test data and sample users to test drive the app.
This is true AI-enabled, composable software.
OutSystems does not just generate apps and agents, it has AI development embedded in all aspects of its platform.
Using its Enterprise Context Graph it understand the business context needed to generate agents that actually work and deliver value.
And its excellent platform takes care of the full SDLC of your apps and makes sure your apps and agents are inherently secure, which is invaluable in this age of Mythos, Fable and the likes.
All these features combined bring tremendous value, reduce risks, come at a low cost and at a high speed of delivery.
It allows you to build innovative Agentic apps, while keeping all the benefits of a low-code platform.
Want to know more? Send me a message here on LinkedIn or reach out at r.vandekerkhof@novioq.com!