Tooling Catalog
Standards and Protocols
Portable standards, discovery formats, and MCP tooling for agent surfaces
Last verified 2026-09-24
Use these when agent surfaces need to be discoverable, inspectable, portable, or authenticated without relying on vendor-specific prompt conventions.
Standards and Protocols
Prioritize these because they outlive individual vendors and keep agent surfaces portable.
| Tool | Website | What it is for | Tier | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model Context Protocol | modelcontextprotocol.io | Standard protocol for exposing tools, resources, prompts, and apps to AI clients | Core | The strongest current interoperability bet for agent tools and external context. |
| MCP Registry | registry.modelcontextprotocol.io | Discoverable registry for servers | Conditional | Useful for distribution, but still evaluate server quality case by case. |
| MCP Server Cards | github.com/modelcontextprotocol | Proposed .well-known metadata for discovering MCP servers before connecting | Watch | Worth tracking because it makes tool endpoints discoverable without scraping docs. |
| AGENTS.md | agents.md | Repository instructions for coding agents | Core | Simple, durable context format for Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Devin, and similar tools. |
| AgentReady | agentready.org | MIT-licensed, vendor-neutral spec of stable-ID requirements for agent find/read/act | Watch | v1.0 (August 2026), developed by Ora, Vercel, Mintlify, and Auth0. Defines MUST/SHOULD/MAY requirements (AR-FIND-*, AR-READ-*, AR-ACT-*) but deliberately no scoring; see the scanner comparison. |
| Agent Skills | agentskills.io | Reusable bundles of instructions, scripts, references, and assets for agents | Core | Good abstraction for repeatable specialized capability without bloating the base prompt. Use the public spec for SKILL.md shape and validation. |
| llms.txt | llmstxt.org | LLM-readable site and documentation index | Conditional | Useful when publishing docs for agents to retrieve without noisy crawling. |
| Markdown content negotiation | developers.cloudflare.com | Serving clean when clients request Accept: text/markdown | Core | Lowers waste and gives agents a readable version of public pages. |
| Content Signals | contentsignals.org | Robots-compatible declarations for search, AI input, and AI training permissions | Conditional | Gives agent crawlers more specific content-use policy than allow/block alone. |
| Web Bot Auth | datatracker.ietf.org | Draft standard for bots to identify themselves with signed HTTP requests | Watch | Important if sites need to distinguish friendly agents from generic automation. |
| API Catalog | rfc-editor.org | .well-known catalog for public discovery | Watch | Useful for services with multiple APIs, specs, docs, and status endpoints. |
| JSON Schema | json-schema.org | Schema language for structured inputs and outputs | Core | Foundation for tool schemas, , fixtures, and API validation. |
| OpenAPI 3.1 | spec.openapis.org | Machine-readable HTTP API contracts | Conditional | Include when turning existing APIs into safe, typed agent tools. |
| Arazzo | spec.openapis.org | Multi-step API workflow descriptions | Watch | Promising for documenting tool sequences that agents should not infer from endpoints alone. |
| OAuth protected resource metadata | rfc-editor.org | Discovery metadata for OAuth-protected resources | Conditional | Helps agents find the right authorization server instead of borrowing browser sessions. |
| OpenTelemetry GenAI | opentelemetry.io | Semantic conventions for GenAI spans and events | Core | Gives agent a common shape across model calls, tools, retrieval, and evaluations. |
| AG-UI | docs.ag-ui.com | Agent-user interaction protocol for frontend and backend agent state | Watch | Good signal for standardizing event streams between agent backends and user-facing apps. |
| x402 | x402.org | HTTP-native payments for machine and agent access | Watch | Relevant when agents need to pay for data, tools, APIs, or content without human checkout. Productized by Cloudflare Monetization Gateway (waitlist, July 2026). |
| Universal Commerce Protocol | ucp.dev | Agentic commerce discovery and transaction protocol | Watch | Track for agent-driven shopping and commerce surfaces. |
| Agentic Commerce Protocol | agenticcommerce.dev | Commerce protocol for agent-mediated purchasing | Watch | Beta but contracting: OpenAI shut down Instant Checkout in March 2026 and momentum has moved to . Relevant only to maintain an existing integration. |
DNS-AID is an emerging discovery proposal, currently an individual Internet-Draft. Consider it only for compatible agent clients; see DNS Discovery.
Agent-Readable Web and Access Control
Use these when the site itself should be easy for agents to discover, read, authenticate against, or audit.
| Tool | Website | What it is for | Tier | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent Readiness | isitagentready.com | Lighthouse-style scanner for how well a public site supports | Core | Directly relevant to this project. Includes and separate checks. See the scanner comparison for coverage and applicability. |
| Cloudflare URL Scanner Agent Readiness | blog.cloudflare.com | Programmatic site scanning with an agent-readiness report | Conditional | Useful when readiness checks should run in audits, CI, or recurring monitoring. |
| Markdown for Agents | developers.cloudflare.com | Managed conversion of public pages into Markdown for agents | Conditional | Good reference pattern for making documentation cheaper and more reliable for agents to read. |
| AI Crawl Control | developers.cloudflare.com | Visibility, controls, and policy management for AI crawlers | Conditional | Relevant for publishers, docs sites, and products that need to know which AI services access content. |
| Managed robots.txt for AI crawlers | developers.cloudflare.com | Managed robots.txt directives and Content Signals for AI bot traffic | Conditional | Good operational path when site owners want crawl policy without hand-maintaining every directive. |
| Cloudflare Radar AI Insights | radar.cloudflare.com | Internet-wide data on AI crawler and agent-standard adoption | Watch | Useful for tracking which agent-readable web standards are gaining real adoption. |
MCP Tooling
Use these when building agent-accessible tools rather than one-off function calls.
| Tool | Website | What it is for | Tier | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCP TypeScript SDK | github.com/modelcontextprotocol | Build MCP clients and servers in TypeScript | Core | Primary for TypeScript MCP work. |
| MCP Python SDK | github.com/modelcontextprotocol | Build MCP clients and servers in Python | Conditional | Use when Python owns the tool boundary. |
| MCP Inspector | modelcontextprotocol.io | Local inspection and debugging for MCP servers | Core | Essential for validating tool descriptions, schemas, resources, and prompts. |
| mcp-handler | github.com/vercel | Host MCP servers in web runtimes such as Next.js | Core | Good fit for TypeScript web apps that need to expose MCP endpoints. |
| FastMCP | github.com/jlowin | Python-first MCP framework | Conditional | Useful when decorators and Python service boundaries are simpler than raw protocol plumbing. |
| OpenAI Apps SDK | developers.openai.com | Build MCP-backed apps and UI inside ChatGPT | Watch | Important direction for ChatGPT-integrated tools; track platform maturity and review requirements. |
| Smithery | smithery.ai | MCP registry and hosted connection layer | Watch | Useful for discovery and connection workflows, but inspect each server's trust boundary, auth model, and maintenance state before adoption. |
| Klavis AI | docs.klavis.ai | Hosted and open-source MCP integration layer with managed authentication and tool-format conversion | Conditional | Good when an agent product needs many SaaS tools through MCP without building every and connector path itself. |
| TurboMCP | turbomcp.ai | Self-hosted MCP gateway and management platform with server registry, RBAC, DLP, and audit logging | Watch | mcp.run now redirects here. Evaluate self-hosting requirements before adoption. |
| Ampersand MCP Server | docs.withampersand.com | Hosted MCP server over Ampersand's connector platform | Watch | Alpha according to its own docs; evaluate for embedded integration products rather than as a default MCP layer. |