OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block quietly did something important yesterday: they donated core pieces of their agent technology into a new neutral nonprofit called the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), established under the Linux Foundation. The contributions include AGENTS.md, Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Block’s open source “goose” framework. Together, these tools create the early architecture for interoperable agents.
AGENTS.md is the simplest part and also the most disruptive. It is a plain Markdown file that sits in the root of a code repository and acts like a contract for any agent that touches that code. It tells the agent how to build, test, lint, secure, and operate the project. Developers do not have to rely on tool-specific documentation or proprietary wrappers. The rules live in one place. Any supported agent knows what to do. ...
The foundation that now holds these tools matters as much as the tools themselves. The Linux Foundation has a long track record of managing open standards that reshape industries. ...
In practice, if agents follow agreed protocols, the market becomes less about individual models and more about the quality of the workflows built on top of them. The competition shifts to orchestration, trust, and domain expertise. ...
See the full story here: https://shellypalmer.com/2025/12/agents-have-a-standard-now/