The real agent risk that Replit’s database deletion revealed

In July 2025, Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr and a well-known investor in enterprise software, decided to publicly test one of AI’s most repeated promises: that anyone can build an application without programming, simply by giving instructions to an agent. He chose Replit , a platform presented as the safest place to do so. He gave himself 12 days and worked with real data, documenting his progress on X and on the SaaStr blog .