Comment by smpandya
18 hours ago
Cool launch. Assuming you guys view email (and therefore SMTP) as becoming the de facto agent communication protocol in the long run. My question — why not something bespoke, similar to OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol or x402 from Coinbase?
Network effects - agents need to meet humans where they already work. Would rather use something standard than bespoke.
And how long will humans and agents be communicating over email?
We have strict rules for our customer service people not to respond to what seems to be a bot, since all the "agent" based communication we get is for conducting scams. It is never worthwhile to engage with or pursue.
If we lose a sale or two, that's okay.
I think there will be bad actors in any field, and right now, a lot of agent-based outreach might fall into that bucket, so its rational to be initially skeptical.
The more interesting shift isnt whether humans will keep using email with agents, but whether agents can become distinguishable from noise. Historically, we ignored anonymous calls but we engaged with known vendors that had reputation, contracts, and consequences.
Once an agent has a persistent identity/a domain, trust becomes something that can be accumulated over time instead of being assumed per message.