Summary: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block are building a shared set of open standards so AI agents can “play nice” — that is, interoperate, share tasks, and work across platforms. This move aims to lower friction for developers, reduce market fragmentation, and make agentic systems safer and more useful. It does not remove competition; it changes how competition happens. The question now is how technical design, commercial incentives, and public interest will be balanced while these standards form.
Interrupt — Engage: three big names stepping up to craft open standards is the kind of headline that stops people mid-scroll. It also raises the immediate question: will this make agents actually work together, or will it be an industry PR exercise? Will smaller firms and researchers buy in, or will they be boxed out? Those are the right questions to ask.
Why open standards for agentic software matter
Agentic software — autonomous systems that perform sequences of tasks, make decisions, and coordinate with users or other services — is no longer a laboratory novelty. As agents become more capable, the usefulness of one vendor’s agent depends on how well it cooperates with others. Open standards reduce friction: they let an agent built by Company A call services from Company B, hand off tasks, and preserve user intent and safety guarantees across boundaries. Saying “play nice” is shorthand for that technical and social work: shared protocols, data schemas, safety signals, and behavioral expectations.
What OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block are proposing
They want a set of publicly documented protocols and specifications that describe how agents discover each other, how they request permissions, how they pass tasks and data, and how they signal trust and risk. That includes message formats, API patterns, identity and authentication schemes, and safety controls. The aim is not a single implementation but a common language — a plumbing layer for agents. Open standards, open standards, open standards — repeating that matters, because without a shared language, agents remain islands.
Technical building blocks to expect
At the core will be a few concrete pieces:
• Discovery and registry: how agents advertise capabilities and find one another.
• Capability descriptions: machine-readable descriptions of what an agent can do, with limits and preconditions.
• Inter-agent messaging: a secure, observable protocol for handing off tasks, results, and status updates.
• Identity, consent, and delegation: standards for verifying identity, obtaining user consent, and delegating authority safely.
• Safety signals and contract semantics: explicit ways to state constraints, guardrails, and liability rules so an agent doesn’t overstep.
Why this is more than technical work
Standards are social artifacts. Their success depends on incentives. Will cloud providers and platform owners accept a standard that makes their walled gardens more porous? Will startups adopt a schema authored by market leaders? No single technical spec wins adoption by itself. That’s where governance, licensing, and commercial models matter. The sponsors must offer clear benefits to adopters: easier integration, larger addressable market, and assurances about safety and liability. Reputation and leadership from respected firms provide momentum, but momentum alone does not guarantee broad uptake.
Benefits for developers, businesses, and users
Interoperability lowers developer costs. If an agent can call standard services for payments, identity, or data retrieval, developers spend less time building connectors and more time on domain value. For businesses, standards reduce vendor lock-in and encourage modular product strategies. Users gain portability — their preferences, permissions, and workflows can travel between agents. Social proof matters: once several large platforms commit, others will follow to avoid isolation. That’s how a standard moves from draft to de facto.
Risks, and who might lose
Standards shift power. Companies that monetize closed ecosystems may resist. Smaller firms could gain or lose depending on governance detail: a fair, open process helps them; a captured process doesn’t. Security risks rise if standards are incomplete: a common protocol can become a wide attack surface. Safety concerns also persist: standards that let agents delegate tasks must prevent cascading failures and malicious coordination. No, a standards effort won’t erase these risks — it will change their shape.
Governance: the unwritten part of any standard
Who writes the spec, who enforces it, and who updates it will determine whether the standard serves the public interest. Transparent processes, multistakeholder boards, and open reference implementations increase trust. If governance is opaque or dominated by a few firms, doubts will follow. Will this be a community-driven standard or a consortium-controlled specification? How will disputes be resolved? Those governance questions are as consequential as the technical ones.
Regulatory and ethical considerations
Standards interact with law. A well-crafted spec can help compliance: audit trails, consent records, and safety modes are technically easier with a standard. But regulators will watch who controls the standard and whether it reduces competition. There’s a legitimate civic angle: standards that promote transparency and accountability can protect consumers and public interest. Ask this: who gains if certain safety signals are optional? If safety becomes negotiable, users lose. That is a point regulators will not ignore.
Business strategies that follow interoperability
Open standards don’t mean businesses stop competing. They change the battleground. Competition shifts toward quality, vertical specialization, customer relationships, and service-level guarantees. Firms that retain proprietary differentiation will focus on higher-layer features, network effects, and trust. For many, participating early in standards-setting is a strategic move: shape the rules, gain influence, and build developer goodwill. Would you rather shape the street signs or get stuck following them?
How adoption will likely unfold
Expect a multi-stage path: publish drafts, build reference implementations, create incentive programs for adopters, and demonstrate cross-agent scenarios. Case studies — booking travel via chained agents, seamless payments handled by a standards-compliant wallet, or safety-grade medical triage agents — will prove the concept. Social proof accelerates adoption: when a leading app shows measurable savings, others copy. Will standards be mandated by platforms or embraced voluntarily? Both routes are possible.
Measuring success
Practical metrics: number of adopters, count of inter-agent transactions, reduced integration time for developers, and incidents avoided thanks to shared safety practices. Equally important: governance participation and transparency measures. A standard that’s widely implemented but poorly governed risks failure in trust. The honest metric is whether agents actually “play nice” — do they hand off tasks without data loss or safety regressions?
What I’d watch next
Watch three signals closely: (1) the drafting process — is it open and inclusive; (2) early reference implementations — do they show real cross-vendor workflows; and (3) business commitments — who builds commercial products that rely on the spec. If those align, adoption will accelerate. If not, this will stay an industry announcement with limited effect. Which way will it go? Who will be the swing players?
Final thoughts and questions to carry forward
This initiative is a practical step toward making agentic systems useful at scale. It can make life easier for developers, increase choice for users, and lower systemic risk — if the technical work and governance are honest and inclusive. I empathize with firms that fear losing control; control can finance product development and safety work. I also empathize with users who fear opaque coordination between powerful agents. No, standards are not a silver bullet. They are a tool. They can be used for public benefit or for narrow advantage. Which path will the industry pick?
What matters to you most about this shift — easier integration, stronger safety, lower vendor lock-in, or something else? How should standards balance openness with responsibility? Your perspective will matter if you plan to build on top of these agents — or to compete with them.
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Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Ambre Estève (6-iunIrJtbQ)
