Under the hood of Agentforce and Data 360

Before heading to Dreamforce, I’ll admit I was a bit worried. Worried that the conference would lean too heavily toward marketing — a showcase of vision and excitement, but short on what’s actually live today. Beyond the “forward-looking statement” slide opening each session, would it be clear which features are available now versus what’s still on the roadmap?

And from the 1,500+ sessions available, a majority were of course related to Agentforce — a bundle of AI offerings in the midst of rapid evolution, but which most customers are still only beginning to explore and pilot. Would I get real opportunities to move beyond the marketing layer and learn something I could bring back to my customers tomorrow?

While my Day 1 was filled with glossy keynotes and big-picture vision, Day 2 quickly put my worries to rest. The range of sessions offered genuine depth, with countless opportunities to roll up my sleeves and get hands-on. I spent the day diving under the hood of topics that had caught my attention during the Day 1 keynotes, gaining practical insights that I hope to bring back and apply right away.

Hands-on with Agentforce Vibes
My first hands-on session of the day was Agentforce Vibes — Salesforce’s new “vibe coding” experience. I’d been looking forward to this one since seeing it announced on Salesforce Ben ahead of Dreamforce. Previously known as Salesforce Code Builder, Agentforce Vibes has now been rebranded and re-booted with a much broader vision.

In the session, I was able to quickly spin up Agentforce Vibes, create my own Lightning Web Component, Apex Classes, generate tests, and deploy everything to my sandbox via the Salesforce DX MCP Server — all without writing a single line of code.

While many Salesforce developers and architects (including us at Deploy) already use IDEs like Cursor for AI-assisted development, having this capability natively in Salesforce — fully browser-based — makes it even easier to adopt. Especially for smaller development teams, where it can dramatically lower the barrier to integrating AI into their daily workflow.

Data 360: Activate Your Snowflake Data with Zero Copy
After a quick lunch, it was time to deep-dive into Data 360. In this session, we explored a use case for integrating data from Snowflake, implementing a zero-copy architecture to optimize data pipelines and reduce redundancy. Instead of moving or duplicating data, Zero Copy lets Salesforce query Snowflake data in place — without replication and extra storage.

While Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) has been around for a while, I hadn’t worked with it myself before — so this was my first real hands-on experience. Setting up the integration with Snowflake was surprisingly smooth and intuitive. With deploying a robust and secure zero-copy architecture being a need I see at many of our customers, this session definitely lowered my own barriers to further adopting Data Cloud (sorry, Data 360…) in-practice.

Other Gems from Day 2
Beyond my two deep-dives above, here is a few other sessions and announcements that stood out to me:

True to the Core: the annual True to the Core session is a highlight of Dreamforce for many. Few companies would dare to take such hard, unfiltered questions directly from their community, live on stage. Watch the full session on YouTube.
Agentforce for Setup: Pre-built agents are finally coming to the Salesforce Setup experience. In the pilot release, Salesforce is delivering more than 30 “Jobs to Be Done” - automating everyday admin tasks like user management, troubleshooting, and creating custom objects or fields. Hopefully, this could be a huge productivity boost for admins. Read more in this Salesforce Admin blogpost.
Dark Mode (finally!): Dark Mode is (at long last) making its debut in Salesforce. While it’s still in beta - and currently only for Starter Suite - it’s a long-awaited feature. Ironically though, the Setup experience won’t support it yet. Still, it’s great to see Salesforce taking this step and hopefully we’ll see it go GA soon. Read more here!

Day 2 Wrap-up: Beyond the Buzz, Towards what’s Real
As I wrap up Day 2, I’m leaving not just with notes and slides, but with renewed energy and perspective. After two full days at Dreamforce, my initial worries feel far away. Beyond the marketing gloss and “forward-looking statements”, Dreamforce truly offers real opportunities to go deep.

Whether you want to focus on product-level explorations (like me) or sessions on leadership and innovation, it’s completely up to you. The breadth of choice means there’s genuine room to focus on your own topics of interest — no matter where you sit in the Salesforce ecosystem.

But now - time for Dreamfest and Metallica!