Building Blocks for Agentic AI: The Hierarchy of Developer Needs

For the reason that Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP) was introduced by Anthropic a yr in the past, we’ve seen immense development in giant language fashions (LLMs) and agentic use circumstances. Earlier than MCP turned the de facto agentic normal, builders constructing brokers on high of LLMs must hard-code the connective tissue between the LLM and apps. Builders would want to construct customized integrations between their LLM shopper and the apps required by an finish consumer’s immediate. With MCP, builders can now join instantly with exterior information sources, so their LLM can learn information from and write information to the related functions.

However there’s a breaking level the place issues begin to collapse. The robustness and efficacy of agentic options rely on the standard of the applying programming interfaces (APIs) which might be utilized by an MCP server. MCPs expose instruments which might be invoked by LLMs, and these instruments typically reference particular person API endpoints. The standard of APIs, subsequently, instantly correlates with the LLM shopper’s correct discovery and execution of consumer prompts.

The hierarchy of developer wants

Delivering high quality, constant, and intuitive APIs is a matter of a company’s cultural priorities. At Cisco, we’re lucky to have govt management sponsorship of our platform API floor space, which helps us ship high quality APIs throughout the enterprise.

We’ve discovered that it’s useful to prioritize API roadmaps primarily based on a hierarchy of developer wants.

Maslow’s hierarchy of wants illustrates the speculation that human motivation is pushed by 5 ranges of want. Organized in a pyramid, these are: physiological, security, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The idea means that persons are motivated to meet fundamental wants first earlier than progressing to higher-level wants for self-fulfillment.

Our hierarchy of developer wants takes Maslow’s pyramid and extends it to rank developer ache factors and options based on fundamental wants, enterprise wants, and vertical or industry-specific wants.

The foundational components: API protection and completeness

The developer hierarchy of wants presents a framework for our product and engineering groups to prioritize their roadmaps. For instance, the inspiration of API high quality relies on protection or completeness. With out extant API endpoints, nothing upstream issues—not documentation, code samples, nor developer relations efforts.

Determine 1: The hierarchy of developer wants presents a framework for product and engineering roadmap prioritization.

Subsequent comes the necessity for a high-quality OpenAPI Specification (OAS) and the interior engineering API growth lifecycle. An OAS file may have a number of APIs, but when the prose round every endpoint is sparse, or sure endpoints are lacking schemas and documented parameters, then it forces builders to both guess and take a look at or reverse engineer which features every API endpoint serves by means of rote testing. Each choices supply a poor developer expertise.

It’s vital for any group with a developer movement to put money into linting and static evaluation of latest APIs being developed, in order that inside engineers can simply ship new API performance with out being consultants within the API framework. An incredible instance of that is Cisco DevNet’s open-source instrument, API Insights, which permits builders to audit their API specs to implement greatest practices as early as potential within the growth cycle. Additionally, many individuals aren’t conscious that if the OAS is lacking schemas, it primarily means software program growth kits (SDKs) and infrastructure as code (IaC) instruments like Terraform and Ansible can not use these endpoints—no matter their launch standing—since SDKs and IaC instruments require the flexibility to auto-generate tooling from the OAS.

The ethical of the story: All issues rely on OAS, particularly AI.

Documentation and scalability

The following stage of significance is having intuitive documentation. In case your APIs are implausible however nobody can discover which one does what, or your data structure is a nightmare, it negates the trouble your group put into delivery high quality APIs and OAS. Builders are usually not monoliths. Some are profession software program engineers, however many, particularly within the networking {industry}, are technical professionals like networking engineers who’re studying learn how to write scripts or construct fundamental internet apps utilizing REST APIs for the primary time of their profession. Accordingly, nice developer documentation is a must have earlier than anybody can perceive what is feasible for an AI agent use case.

Transferring to the following stage of developer wants, now we have enterprise scale and high quality. Organizations that promote to Fortune 500 corporations or brownfield enterprises know that scale and the CIA-triad (confidentiality, integrity, availability) are mission-critical tenets. These tenets have to be assured earlier than builders will really feel snug constructing customized options on high of an API, no matter whether or not these options are conventional scripts, app integrations, or agentic troubleshooting options.

At Cisco, we’re proud to carefully companion with our largest prospects and managed service supplier companions to make sure that our platform works easily for everybody, from a mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar store to a Fortune 100 international conglomerate that wants redundancy, immense scale, and price limits, in addition to the best uptime obtainable.

Simplifying API consumption and vertical utility

Our penultimate stage of developer wants is the place we get into abstraction and obfuscation to simplify how APIs are consumed. SDKs and IaC instruments like Ansible and Terraform are the bread and butter of huge enterprises that require widespread automation. IT groups are rising leaner, and networking engineers are anticipated to do extra with much less. If all different developer wants have been met, it turns into straightforward for a company to generate and keep SDKs and developer instruments like an MCP server.

For instance, Cisco Meraki and Cisco Catalyst Heart each keep high quality OAS recordsdata, which prospects can use to generate an MCP server inside a couple of minutes with widespread API instruments like Postman. This enables a developer who’s attempting to construct a customized agent to have the ability to accomplish that in days, not weeks or months, all due to the standard of our APIs, OAS, and docs, and our skill to make sure that high quality at enterprise scale.

Lastly, what actually makes a developer platform shine are code samples and integrations. If all different developer wants are met, this creates an ecosystem situation the place builders can simply create new scripts, integrations, and instruments and share them with the platform neighborhood within the type of code samples, libraries, and integrations.

In the end, delivering full, high-quality APIs, strong documentation, and an engaged ecosystem lays the groundwork for innovation and ensures that agentic options can attain their full potential.