AI: PROTOCOLS THEN & PROTOCOLS NOW

 

We spent 30 years simplifying distributed systems.

TCP/IP.
HTTP.
TLS.

Then we added agents.

Now the architecture diagram looks like this:

MCP → agent ↔ tools/data
A2A → agent ↔ agent
AG-UI → agent ↔ user
A2UI → agent → UI
ANP → agent ↔ agent network
AP2 / UCP → agentic commerce & payments
AGENTS.md / SKILL.md → instructions & capabilities

And no, they're not all protocols.

We are building a new distributed-computing stack…and simultaneously inventing the documentation needed to understand the stack.

The irony?
The agent doesn't just need tools.

It needs:

a protocol,
an identity,
a skill,
a policy,
an interface,
another agent,
and apparently… an ADR explaining all of it.