MCP adoption is a function of time, not tech readiness, as teams slowly shed legacy systems

The future of AI isn't plug-and-play. As intelligent agents move toward real autonomy, developers are stuck in a messy middle—grappling with legacy systems, scattered standards, and a fragmented digital stack.

Daniele Bernardi, Co-Founder and CEO of Toolhouse and a veteran product leader for Twitter’s Spaces API and Meta's revenue-driving tools, breaks down the state of AI action protocols—and the complex work still ahead.

Big unifier energy: Protocols like Anthropic's MCP lay the groundwork for a common tongue for AI. "The big promise of MCP is to unify everything and to give developers the tools they need to easily plug those actions into their models," Bernardi says. It's the dream of seamless, universal automation—but we’re still in the early chapters.

More servers, more problems: The real gap isn't infrastructure. It's uptake. "The problem doesn't lie in providing a server, but in providing the right client," Bernardi says. Right now, "there's a massive supply, but not a ton of demand just yet." Toolhouse is stepping in to help enterprises use what’s already out there. "We need to do a lot more to help enterprises go the route of consuming MCP servers, not push them to add complexity to the already ancient complexity they have," explains Bernardi.

Enterprise speed bump: Even with OpenAI and Anthropic in its corner, MCP hits friction where it matters: old systems. "A lot of enterprises are still legacy and they still have very old APIs that will need to be updated so they can be supported by MCP," Bernardi explains. The plug-and-play vision hasn't landed. "The big—and so far unfulfilled—promise with MCP is that you can plug the two very seamlessly. But in reality, there are big challenges still to be addressed, like authentication and enterprise support."

Standards TBD: "AI is moving very, very fast—faster than any other massive shift in technology," Bernardi says, and standardization is struggling to keep up. Like OAuth before it, MCP may need time to harden. "The jury is still out, and I think there's huge room for derivative works to be seen."