Artificial intelligence can help solve the obstacles that citizen developers still face

We’ve known for some time that low-code and no-code tools and platforms have opened up the technology landscape to “citizen developers”—people outside of IT who may or may not have limited technical skills (though IT staff can also build their own, unseen apps). But there are still issues and complexities in building apps that business users have yet to understand. Can AI and generative AI help smooth the path for low-code and no-code?

Any available data on this trend is vague and outdated, but the numbers that are still being floated are from Gartner’s estimate from around 2021 that 80% of all app development will eventually happen outside of IT departments. Anecdotally, given the ease with which people can design and deploy apps on mobile and in the cloud, it’s a given that everyone has become either an app developer or an assembler to some extent.

Still, business leaders report challenges with citizen development. “I’ve overseen several initiatives where teams adopted no-code platforms and seen firsthand some unexpected obstacles they faced,” Reyansh Mestry, head of marketing at TopSource Worldwide, told me.

Mestry added that citizen development suffers from an “illusion of simplicity.” While these technologies are touted as intuitive, “the deeper teams go, the more complexity there is. For example, when our HR team was trying to build a payroll approval app, they quickly ran into problems integrating tax updates from external APIs. The platform didn’t handle external data well, requiring more customization than expected.”

Add the challenge that “many end users still don’t understand program design, security, or data flow,” commented Jeffrey Zhou, CEO and co-founder of Fig Loans. “For example, teams at Fig Loans tried to build in-house automation tools but ran into data management issues that required IT intervention to fix and optimize.”

The unforeseen technical bottlenecks of low-code and no-code solutions “can be frustrating for non-developers who initially think they can figure it all out without external support, only to discover that the application logic and data handling are more complex than the drag-and-drop tools suggest,” Mestry said.

Decision fatigue is another issue that citizen developers struggle with. “While platforms offer flexibility, this granular freedom can be overwhelming for business users,” Mestry continued. “They often struggle to structure logical flows and effectively configure security controls. When faced with too many decisions—design, workflow, or permissions—they end up building inefficient apps or abandoning a project halfway through.”

Now, many are looking to generative AI, with its copilot class of tools, as a way to overcome these challenges. “AI models can help bridge the knowledge gap by automating code generation based on simple prompts or user intent,” said Scott Dylan, founder of NexaTech Ventures.

“Instead of business users having to learn the intricacies of app development, they can rely on AI to guide them through the development process and even generate entire apps from natural language descriptions,” Dylan continued. “In addition, AI can help troubleshoot issues, optimize code, and ensure security protocols, all of which have traditionally required manual intervention.”

The introduction of AI “is a huge accelerator for the citizen development movement,” said Anthony Maggio, head of product management at Airtable. “Advances in AI have made it possible for technology to build apps from scratch from plain text, enabling virtually any worker to build apps to transform their workflows.”

“As someone who constantly seeks ways to integrate technology into business, I have witnessed firsthand how generative AI is transforming civic development,” said Rain Yang, CEO and founder of WoodenAve, a provider of decorative wood products. A key benefit of AI-enhanced low-code and no-code software, Yang continued, is the removal of technical barriers. “Previously, non-technical users had ideas but lacked the means to execute them,” he said. “AI now enables users to quickly experiment and create applications that were previously unimaginable.”

While AI won’t necessarily expand the universe of citizen developers, it could provide a boost to those currently working with low-code and no-code platforms. “Generative AI isn’t driving broader citizen app development in a profound way,” said Cory Chaplin, West Monroe’s technology and experience leader. “Instead, its role is more about improving specific tools or APIs that business users can use.”

For example, Chaplin reports, “we’re seeing a rise in what we call ‘expert GPTs,’ which are essentially low-code, single-process workflows that use generative AI to process inputs and generate outputs. While these aren’t full applications, they are streamlined workflows built by citizen developers using low-code or no-code tools.”

While generative AI “is a component of these individual workflows, it’s not the primary driver of civic development,” Chaplin said. “We’re more focused on using generative AI to improve specific tasks, rather than developing complete applications.”

Today’s generation of large language models “holds vast amounts of information, including company-specific context, industry landscape and best practices, historical knowledge, and more,” Maggio said. “Whereas human agents previously had to manually search for this information while building apps, AI can deliver this knowledge on demand, transforming the no-code app development process from hours to seconds.”

In short, “it’s not just about empowering people to build apps,” Labourey said. “AI will empower citizen developers to build smarter, more adaptive apps, incorporating data-driven decisions in ways that were previously beyond their reach.”