Agentic web patterns: what Web 2.0 taught me

patterns

Introducing the four core patterns of the early Agentic Web — a guide to getting started on implementing AI functionality into your website. Just as Web 2.0 had a set of key design patterns to help smooth the way for organizations, a set of patterns is emerging for the agentic web too.

The Agentic Web: how AI systems will change websites

Let's share what we know

The web is shifting from pages to actions. As AI agents increasingly act on behalf of users, websites are evolving from content destinations into systems that expose capabilities — things machines can discover, combine and execute. In this post, I explore what’s driving the “agentic web,” from MCP and browser-native AI to changing discovery and monetization, and what it means for product teams, publishers and developers.

The Agentic Web stack

Agentic Web

As AI agents begin interacting directly with websites and services, a new “Agentic Web stack” is emerging. Here’s my attempt to map the technologies shaping this next phase of the web.

Why platform companies keep buying frontend framework teams

Late last week, the global cloud platform Cloudflare acquired the company behind Astro, one of the leading frontend frameworks. This follows a pattern of popular frameworks coming under the umbrella of platform companies — or at least becoming financially supported by them. This trend perhaps began in 2021, when Vercel hired Svelte creator Rich Harris. … Read more

AI Engineering Trends in 2025: Agents, MCP and Vibe Coding

When I went to the first AI Engineer Summit in October 2023, AI agents were a joke. At that point, agents hadn’t proven they could consistently do even basic tasks. But fast forward just two years, and agentic technology has made big strides — albeit it’s still relatively unproven as completely autonomous software. Regardless, agents … Read more

Agent UI Standards Multiply: MCP Apps and Google’s A2UI

This week, Google launched A2UI, an open source project to help developers build “agentic user interfaces.” It’s the latest in what’s becoming a regular release cycle of new standards and protocols for building a user interface in AI agents and chatbots. First, there was MCP-UI, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) ecosystem project closely aligned with … Read more

Web Development in 2025: AI’s React Bias vs. Native Web

There was a further shift away from complexity in web development this year, with frontend frameworks like Astro and Svelte gaining popularity as more developers looked for solutions beyond the React ecosystem. Meanwhile, native web platform features proved they’re up to the job of building sophisticated web applications — with CSS in particular improving over … Read more