Interoperability

Interoperability is the ability of different systems, platforms, and applications to exchange data, share functionality, and work together seamlessly—without requiring custom integration for each connection.

Interoperability is the technical prerequisite for composability, which Jon Radoff has called the most powerful creative force in the universe. When systems interoperate, outputs from one become inputs for another, enabling combinatorial innovation that no single system could produce alone. The web itself is history's greatest interoperability achievement: HTML, HTTP, URLs, and DNS create a universal layer where any content can link to any other content.

In gaming and virtual worlds, interoperability remains the great unsolved challenge. Avatars, items, and identities are largely trapped within individual platforms. Standards like OpenXR address hardware interoperability for spatial computing. The Metaverse Standards Forum brings together industry players to develop shared protocols. But true cross-platform interoperability—wearing your Fortnite skin in Roblox, carrying your Minecraft inventory to another game—remains aspirational.

The agentic web is making interoperability urgent and achievable. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) provides standardized interfaces for AI agents to interact with any tool or data source. WebGPU and WASM standardize compute capabilities across browsers. Open-source AI models create interoperable intelligence layers. When agents can seamlessly compose services from different providers, the pressure on platforms to interoperate increases: walled gardens that refuse to interoperate become invisible to agents and lose relevance.