What Teams Must Unlearn From the Composable Era

Why the habits that once made us successful now hold us back in the age of SitecoreAI

For nearly a decade, “composable” was the rallying cry of digital experience. It promised freedom from monoliths, the ability to choose best‑of‑breed tools, and the flexibility to evolve your stack at your own pace. Teams reorganized around it. Vendors rebranded for it. Entire consulting practices were built on helping enterprises assemble and integrate their perfect constellation of services.

Composable wasn’t just an architecture — it was a mindset.

But 2026 has rewritten the rules.

AI‑driven platforms like SitecoreAI have introduced a fundamentally different operating model. Agentic workflows, unified data layers, and cross‑platform orchestration don’t simply benefit from integration — they depend on it. The very habits that once made composable successful now create friction, fragmentation, and operational drag.

To thrive in the AI‑first era, teams must unlearn the patterns that no longer serve them.

This isn’t about abandoning the lessons of composable. It’s about recognizing that the world has changed — and our mental models must change with it.

🧠 1. Unlearning “Everything must be decoupled”

The composable era taught us to break everything apart: micro‑services, micro‑frontends, micro‑schemas, micro‑everything. The goal was independence. Replaceability. Optionality.

But AI doesn’t think in fragments.

AI agents require context density — a rich, interconnected understanding of content, data, audiences, and intent. When everything is decoupled, that context becomes thin, scattered, and incomplete.

In the composable era, decoupling was a strength. In the AI era, coherence is the strength.

Teams must unlearn the instinct to split everything into smaller and smaller pieces. The new question isn’t “How do we decouple this?” but “How do we ensure the AI can understand this?”

🔗 2. Unlearning “We need best‑of‑breed everything”

Composable encouraged teams to assemble stacks with 8–20 specialized vendors. Each tool excelled at one thing, but none of them understood the whole picture.

AI platforms punish this approach.

• Agents can’t reason across siloed tools
• Integration debt compounds with every new vendor
• Governance becomes a nightmare
• Data consistency becomes impossible

In 2026, the value isn’t in stitching together the perfect stack — it’s in choosing a platform where the intelligence flows freely across CMS, DAM, CDP, personalization, and analytics.

Best‑of‑breed is no longer the goal. Best‑of‑ecosystem is.

🛠 3. Unlearning “Developers must wire everything together”

In the composable era, developers were the glue. They built pipelines, stitched APIs, and maintained orchestration logic. Every new tool meant new integration work. Every new workflow meant new code.

In the agentic era, AI is the glue.

Agents orchestrate content creation, enrichment, compliance, personalization, and distribution. They move work across systems without developers writing brittle pipelines.

Developers don’t disappear — they evolve.

Their new role is to:

• Build extensions
• Define guardrails
• Shape governance
• Create reusable patterns
• Ensure the AI operates safely and effectively

The unlearning here is profound: Stop wiring systems together. Start enabling intelligence to flow.

🎛 4. Unlearning “Marketers need to manually configure everything”

Composable personalization, segmentation, and content modeling required human configuration. Every rule, every variant, every segment was hand‑crafted.

In 2026, that’s an outdated assumption.

• Agents generate segments
• Agents test and optimize variants
• Agents enforce brand rules
• Agents orchestrate campaigns end‑to‑end

Marketers shift from operators to strategists. They define intent, not instructions.

The machine tunes itself — and teams must unlearn the instinct to micromanage it.

🧩 5. Unlearning “Every team needs its own tool”

Composable encouraged tool sprawl. Creative teams used one system, content teams another, data teams another, marketing teams another. Each department optimized for its own workflow.

AI breaks this model.

Agents operate across the entire platform. They don’t care which department “owns” which tool. They need a unified environment where content, data, and logic coexist.

The new mindset: Optimize for cross‑team intelligence, not departmental autonomy.

This shift is cultural as much as technical.

🔮 6. Unlearning “We future‑proof by staying decoupled”

This was the biggest myth of the composable era.

Decoupling was seen as insurance — a way to swap vendors as needed. But in 2026:

• AI platforms evolve faster than integration layers
• Vendor‑agnostic architectures become a liability
• The safest bet is a platform that adapts itself

Future‑proofing no longer means “keep everything replaceable.” It means “choose a platform that learns.”

The new risk isn’t lock‑in — it’s falling behind.

🎚 7. Unlearning “More choice = more control”

Composable gave teams infinite choice. AI gives teams better outcomes, not more knobs.

• AI reduces decision fatigue
• Constraints become a competitive advantage
• Teams focus on strategy, not configuration

The shift is from choosing tools to choosing outcomes. From configuring systems to guiding intelligence.

Choice is no longer the differentiator. Clarity is.

🏁 Conclusion: The Courage to Unlearn

The composable era taught us valuable lessons. It pushed the industry forward. It gave teams flexibility and control at a time when monoliths were holding them back.

But the world has changed.

AI‑first platforms like SitecoreAI demand new mental models — ones built on coherence, context, orchestration, and intelligence. The habits that once made us successful now create friction.

The teams that thrive in 2026 won’t be the ones who mastered composable. They’ll be the ones who learned to let it go.

Composable thinking got us here. For the forseeable future AI‑first thinking will take us forward.

I'm not scared, you're scared.