S2 E6 - The API Advantage for AI Agents

In this episode, Mike and Matt look back on season 2, capturing some of the best and most insightful moments from each show. Topics include optionality, MCP, API discovery, and more.

In this episode, Markus Müller joins Mike and Matt to share the lessons organizations can learn from the world of APIs that can be applied to their adoption of the Model Context Protocol (MCP). The conversation covers tool discovery, agent governance, and AI protocols beyond MCP.

In this episode, Mike, Stephen, and Matt are joined by Dr. Carliss Baldwin, Professor Emerita at Harvard University, Author of Design Rules Vol. 1 & Design Rules Vol. 2. Dr. Baldwin shares the story of how she originally connected the financial concept of option theory to modularization of technology, where options thinking could be applied in the post-AI world, and why complementarity is an equally important concept when analyzing digital ecosystems.

In this episode, Ken Han and Baljeet Malhotra of Teejlab join Mike and Matt to discuss how to manage the spectrum of risks for APIs, how risk management relates to API discovery, and what new risks–and rewards–the explosion of AI technologies is creating in the world of APIs.

In this episode, Mike, Matt, and guest co-host Stephen Fishman sit down with Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media. Tim recalls the origins of the API Economy and "Web 2.0", assesses the impacts of AI on the current digital landscape, and envisions the future of APIs–including MCP, open ecosystems, and the emergence of semantic networks.

In this episode, Mike and Matt continue their discussion on the post-GenAI API landscape. This time, they dive deeper into API protocols as well as predicting what the impact of AI will be on API security, traffic management, and the API economy as a whole.

In this episode, Mike and Matt speculate about the future of APIs in the post-GenAI world. They challenge conventional wisdom regarding API protocols, development lifecycles, discovery mechanisms and more with an eye to what organizations can do right now to prepare. Also tulips. :-)

In this podcast, Diana Montalion–author of Learning Systems Thinking and the upcoming Knowledge Flow–does a deep dive into the essence of information and knowledge, how they relate to context and action, and the role APIs play in allowing knowledge flow in digital ecosystems. Connect with Diana at https://montalion.com/.

In this episode, Mike and Matt explore two of Mike’s most recent pieces of writing, which both explore how to design for unknown and emergent systems. The first article covers the concept of innovation, and its relationship to emergent systems. The second brief article calls out a new perspective in design: catering to machine clients rather than humans.

Description: In this episode, Mike and Matt make the case for why following the best practices of API strategy and implementation is the best path to readiness for implementing AI Agents. Along the way, they talk about where agentic technology can best be applied first, what some of the big blockers will be, and how well-defined, well-designed APIs can provide the foundation.