Equation 9 · How AI Models Learned to Use Tools: A Protocol History
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Symbol M
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Symbol N
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Two. The number of independently designed, mutually incompatible tool-calling schemas in wide production use will keep shrinking, not because of any new technical result but because switching costs increasingly favor the specification with foundation-level, multi-vendor governance over any single company’s dialect. The assumption behind this forecast is that the M N integration cost named above continues to bind as more hosts and more tools are built, making a shared protocol progressively cheaper relative to bespoke wrappers even for teams with no particular loyalty to any one vendor. Disconfirmed if , by the horizon, a majority of newly launched agent frameworks still ship a bespoke…
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Two. The number of independently designed, mutually incompatible tool-calling schemas in wide production use will keep shrinking, not because of any new technical result but because switching costs increasingly favor the specification with foundation-level, multi-vendor governance over any single company’s dialect. The assumption behind this forecast is that the M N integration cost named above continues to bind as more hosts and more tools are built, making a shared protocol progressively cheaper relative to bespoke wrappers even for teams with no particular loyalty to any one vendor. Disconfirmed if , by the horizon, a majority of newly launched agent frameworks still ship a bespoke tool-definition format with no MCP interoperability layer at all.
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