Are you building on established and emerging standards, or on an island?

The agentic AI ecosystem is consolidating around a set of protocols and standards. MCP for tool integration — how agents connect to data and capabilities. A2A for agent communication — how agents discover and talk to each other. OAuth On-Behalf-Of for delegation — how agents act with the authority of the user who delegated. Trust Spanning Protocol for cross-boundary trust — how identity and authority travel across organisations.

Building proprietary alternatives to any of these might feel faster now. But it risks leaving you incompatible with the ecosystem forming around you — unable to integrate with partners, vendors, or even your own future tools.

The shift from prompt engineering to system engineering means the infrastructure choices you make today determine how well your agents interoperate tomorrow. Standards are how you avoid building on an island.

Go deeper: Interactive explainers on MCP, A2A, OAuth OBO, AgentGateway, and TSP walk through each protocol step by step.