For decades, the path to monetizing development skills has been fairly rigid: get a job, go freelance, or build a full-blown SaaS company. But what about the vast space in between? What about the countless brilliant scripts, custom workflows, and specialized processes that developers build every day? These assets are incredibly valuable, yet they often remain locked away in private repos or config files.
Enter a new paradigm: Services-as-Software.
This model reframes your unique operational logic not as a one-off script or a feature within a larger app, but as a standalone, marketable product. It’s about packaging a specific business capability into a simple, callable API that others can consume and pay for.
With a platform like devs.do, developers can finally productize their expertise, transforming complex operations into scalable services. It’s not just automation; it’s your entire business, codified.
Think of a Service-as-Software as a single-purpose, autonomous micro-business. On the devs.do platform, these are called 'Doers': callable API endpoints that perform one job and do it well.
Unlike a traditional SaaS application, a Service-as-Software doesn't have a user interface. Its "UI" is its API. It isn't a library you import; it's a managed, running service you call.
Consider these potential services:
Each of these solves a specific, painful problem. And with the right tools, they can be built and deployed in minutes, creating a new, direct revenue stream for the developer who built it.
"This sounds great," you might think, "but building, deploying, and maintaining a scalable, production-ready API for every little idea is a huge amount of work."
This is where the concept of the Agentic Workflow changes the game.
An Agentic Workflow is a declarative sequence of tasks executed by specialized agents. Instead of writing complex imperative code for every step (e.g., cloning a repo, installing dependencies, running a process), you simply define what you want to happen and let the platform handle the how.
Let's look at how you'd build a code-analyzer service on devs.do:
import { Doer, Client } from '@do-inc/sdk';
// Configure your client with an API key
const client = new Client({ apiKey: 'YOUR_API_KEY' });
// Define a new service (a "Doer")
const codeAnalysisService: Doer = {
name: 'code-analyzer.devs.do',
description: 'Analyzes a git repository for code quality.',
input: {
type: 'object',
properties: {
repoUrl: { type: 'string', description: 'The URL of the git repository.' },
},
},
// Define the agentic workflow
workflow: [
{ agent: 'git.clone', params: { url: '{{input.repoUrl}}' } },
{ agent: 'linter.run', params: { path: './cloned-repo' } },
{ agent: 'security.scan', params: { path: './cloned-repo' } },
],
};
// Deploy your new service to the .do platform
async function deployService() {
const deployedDoer = await client.create(codeAnalysisService);
console.log(`Service deployed successfully at: ${deployedDoer.url}`);
}
deployService();
Notice what you didn't have to write. You didn't write the logic for cloning a git repo. You didn't have to manage the file system or execute shell commands. You simply declared a workflow: clone this repo, then run a linter, then run a security scan.
This frees you to focus on the high-level business value, composing powerful services by chaining together pre-built agents.
The final piece of the puzzle is reliability. A one-off script is fragile. A Service-as-Software, designed for monetization, must be robust. This is achieved by treating your workflows as first-class software artifacts—a concept known as Business-as-Code.
Just like your application code, your workflows are:
This is a fundamental departure from traditional automation, which often relies on brittle scripts or opaque UI-driven tools. Business-as-Code provides the reliability and scalability necessary to build a real business on top of your services. Platforms like devs.do provide the runtime for this new paradigm, handling the orchestration, error handling, scaling, and observability out of the box.
The Services-as-Software model opens up a new frontier for developers. It empowers you to productize your unique skills and workflows without the overhead of building a full company.
By leveraging Agentic Workflows and the Business-as-Code philosophy, you can move from writing code to delivering value directly. What complex process have you perfected? What unique data-munging script do you use every day? That's not just a script; it's a potential product.
It's time to stop letting your most valuable logic sit idle. Transform your operations into code, and turn your code into revenue.