I used to dread setting up CI/CD pipelines just to deploy code to AWS or GCP. The process was tedious and expensive, and I often defaulted to ‘easy’ platforms like Vercel or Railway, even if it meant paying a premium. But now, with the help of AI coding agents, I can create my own pipeline straight to bare metal in no time.
This shift marks a significant change in the way we approach DevOps. With AI, ops is no longer a headache, but a creative tool that enables faster, cheaper, and more satisfying deployments.
## The End of Lock-in
Vendor-specific CI/CD glue is a moat for cloud providers, but with AI, that moat evaporates. Infra becomes portable, and migrations become a prompt, not a project.
## The Rise of Neo-Clouds
Platforms like Vercel and Railway made deployment trivial, but at a premium. Now, imagine the same ease-of-use, but on cheap bare-metal or commodity cloud. AI becomes the abstraction layer, making it possible.
## DevOps Becomes Prompt-Ops
Instead of learning Terraform, Helm, and a dozen other DSLs, you just describe your deployment strategy. The AI translates it into the right infra code, security configs, rollback plans, and monitoring hooks.
## Cost Drops, Experimentation Rises
When deploying to low-cost metal is as easy as ‘vercel deploy,’ teams will try more, ship more, and kill bad ideas faster. Lower infra cost equals more innovation.
We’re at the start of a new curve. Devs won’t choose between ‘easy but expensive’ and ‘cheap but painful.’ We’ll have easy + cheap.