Richard MacManus
@ricmac.org
Head of Editorial at Latent Space, a leading AI engineering publication · Internet historian at cybercultural.com · Founded ReadWriteWeb (2003–2012) · 🥝 in 🇬🇧 Classic Web: https://bsky.app/profile/classicweb.site Leaflet: https://ricmac.leaflet.pub
Some of you old webheads might enjoy my latest post on Latent Space. It turns out the Semantic Web is alive and well, in the form of ontologies being used to keep LLMs honest. www.latent.space/p/ontologies...
Ontologies Are So Back: Why AI Agents Are Reviving the Semantic Web
AI engineers are rediscovering ontologies as a way to keep probabilistic agents inside deterministic boundaries.
latent.space
Today's my first day in a new role: Head of Editorial at Latent Space. From ReadWriteWeb to The New Stack, I've always loved being at the cutting edge of tech x media. So I'm thrilled to join swyx & his team! www.latent.space
Latent.Space | Substack
The AI Engineer newsletter + Top technical AI podcast. How leading labs build Agents, Models, Infra, & AI for Science. See https://latent.space/about for highlights from Greg Brockman, Andrej Karpathy...
latent.space
This week's Agentic Web News covers the rise of the agentic web as a concept, browsers integrated into the agentic tools of OpenAI and Anthropic, real momentum for the WebMCP protocol, plus further agentic commerce and web development news. agenticweb.news/browsers-in-...
Browsers in agents, WebMCP momentum, and AI engineering lessons
Key trends from the AI Engineer World's Fair, browsers moving inside agents, and fresh WebMCP momentum across commerce and web development.
agenticweb.news
My personal reflections on a hectic and inspiring week in San Francisco, covering the AI Engineer World's Fair. agenticweb.news/ai-engineer-...
My week at the AI Engineer World's Fair
AI Engineer World’s Fair showed how quickly the AI builder ecosystem is scaling, with San Francisco again feeling like the center of a new web-era boom.
agenticweb.news
Very sad to hear of the passing of Om Malik, one of the original tech bloggers. Our sites competed in the Technorati era, but he was one of the kindest, wisest and most generous people I met in Silicon Valley. RIP Om — one of tech’s original minds. cybercultural.com/p/026-rww-re...
ReadWriteWeb’s Big Redesign & the Inaugural Crunchies
At the end of 2007, ReadWriteWeb unveils our new design — featuring a slash of vibrant red in the header! Also, we co-host the first Crunchies in San Francisco and I meet Mashable’s founder.
cybercultural.com
This week’s market signals suggest the agentic web is entering a new phase. AWS + Adobe (MCP), Vercel (eve), Okta (agent identity) and Google (Agentic Resource Discovery) are all building different layers of what is becoming the enterprise agent stack. agenticweb.news/agent-stack-...
The agent stack is becoming enterprise infrastructure
From agent frameworks and MCP integrations to identity governance and open discovery, this week’s market signals show the agent stack rapidly gaining adoption in the enterprise.
agenticweb.news
If you like writing long threads on Bluesky, wait until you discover "blog posts." Start blogging with @pckt.blog, @leaflet.pub or @offprint.app today and get 25% off your first year, on us.
Summer of Standard.site - Bluesky
We've partnered with three blogging platforms built on AT Protocol — Offprint, Leaflet, and pckt.blog — to give you 25% off any annual plan this summer.
bsky.social
What does "web-based" actually mean in 2026? While pondering that, the Web 2.0 cliche "the web is made of people" came to mind, a saying that perhaps derived from the 1973 dystopian movie Soylent Green. Some Friday musings from an ol' webhead just trying to keep it real... ricmac.org/2026/06/19/t...
Never forget: the web is made of people!
The web is much more than a set of technologies; it is fundamentally a human network. Even in the AI era, the web is made of people.
ricmac.org
Turns out websites have a future in the AI era after all. I talk to an e-commerce founder about why his team is building around the emerging #WebMCP open standard. agenticweb.news/nekuda-webmc...
Nekuda’s WebMCP Bet on Agentic Commerce
Nekuda is betting that agentic commerce will augment websites, not replace them, with WebMCP providing the bridge between agents and merchant-controlled experiences.
agenticweb.news
The agentic web is moving from read and write... to read, write and execute! This week’s signals span agent payments, callable app actions, persistent cloud execution and portable organisational knowledge. agenticweb.news/agentic-web-...
The agentic web gets execution rights
Visa, Mastercard, Apple, OpenAI and Google are building the payment, action, execution and knowledge layers agents need to act.
agenticweb.news
The user interface is moving from pages into agents. MCP Apps, atomic brand kits and headless CMS infrastructure all point to the same shift: apps, brands and content becoming machine-readable components that agents can assemble for users. ricmac.org/2026/06/12/u...
The user interface is moving from pages into agents
This week’s field notes connect MCP Apps, generative UI, atomic brand kits and Salesforce’s Contentful deal as signals of a new agent-mediated interface layer.
ricmac.org
My latest interview with agentic web builders is with Ido Salomon & Liad Yosef, about MCP Apps and the rise of software apps inside of AI assistants & agents. In particular, they're focused on the UI aspects — including now generative UI. agenticweb.news/mcp-apps/
MCP Apps and the Agentic Web’s App Layer
MCP Apps is turning UI over MCP into a candidate application layer for AI assistants, but discovery and ranking remain unresolved.
agenticweb.news
New on Agentic Web News: The machine-readable web becomes a business problem In this week's market signals post, I connect Cloudflare, Microsoft Web IQ, atomic brand kits, Salesforce + Contentful, and The Economist’s ChatGPT app. agenticweb.news/agentic-web-...
Agentic Web Market Signals: Machine Demand
Bot traffic, grounding APIs, atomic brand systems, and CMS deals point to a new commercial layer forming around AI agents.
agenticweb.news
Who owns that AI agent? I wrote about DNSid, a project from Innovation Labs / Identity Digital that wants to use DNS as an accountability layer for agents on the web. The agentic web needs identity — ideally open, shared infrastructure rather than platform control. agenticweb.news/who-owns-ai-...
Who Owns That AI Agent? DNSid Has an Answer
DNSid sets out a DNS-based accountability layer for AI agents, aimed at answering who owns an agent and who is responsible for its actions.
agenticweb.news
"If I were building a website tomorrow, or building a SaaS app tomorrow, I would probably build it MCP-first, because that’s how agents increasingly want to consume this." A quote from my interview with Alex Salazar, CEO of Arcade — building middleware for agents. agenticweb.news/arcade-actio...
Arcade’s Bet: The Agentic Web Needs an Actions Runtime
Arcade CEO Alex Salazar argues that MCP servers are only part of the agentic web stack. Enterprises also need an actions runtime for authorization, governance and execution.
agenticweb.news
In this week's Agentic Web News market signals, I look at the economic layers now emerging in the agentic web: 📡 Agentic advertising enters its “wild west” phase 🛒 Amazon launches agentic shopping infra 🆔 DNS-AID points to the need for agent identity & discovery agenticweb.news/agentic-web-...
Agentic Web Market Signals: Advertising, Commerce & Identity
This week's market signals look at the emerging economic layers of the agentic web: advertising standards, agentic commerce infrastructure, and identity/discovery systems for AI agents.
agenticweb.news
"Hey...let's be careful out there." Prompted by the immortal words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues, I look at two lessons from RunSignup’s careful AI rollout. I also reflect on some of the negative consequences of agentic AI this week (tech layoffs, etc). ricmac.org/2026/05/29/a...
Let’s be careful out there: 2 lessons for businesses adopting agentic AI
What businesses can learn from RunSignup’s careful AI rollout: embed agentic tools where users already work, and move fast but safely.
ricmac.org
Testing the new @standard.site integration. ricmac.leaflet.pub/3mjwy6k77u22q I like how it makes it stand out as a publication. Great to see WordPress also supporting this, as well as the Atmosphere native apps like Leaflet. (Nb: you need to upgrade your Bluesky app to see the difference)
My 23rd blogging anniversary
On this day in 2003, I launched a blog called Read/Write Web.
ricmac.leaflet.pub
Readers, writers, publishers of the Atmosphere, exciting news: Bluesky shipped @standard.site integration! Posts and publications from Leaflet now render on the timeline with some *special sauce* — see it in this very post :) More in Lab Notes…including a new standard.site post block in Leaflet!
The Standardverse expands skyward!
Lab Notes 027: a major integration to boost blogging on Bluesky, a new Leaflet block type, lexicon additions, and other news from the Standard Site ecosystem
lab.leaflet.pub
v1.122 is rolling out today, featuring a better way to discover and share articles, blog posts and newsletters across the Atmosphere via new, dynamic Standard.site link cards. 🧵
RunSignup, a web platform for race organizers, is deploying AI chatbots and building agentic infrastructure across its product. I spoke to founder Bob Bickel about how MCP, AI assistants, and conversational interfaces are reshaping SaaS. agenticweb.news/runsignup-ai...
How RunSignup is building AI agents into every part of its platform
RunSignup, a web platform for race organizers, is deploying AI chatbots and building agentic infrastructure across its product. Founder Bob Bickel explains how MCP, AI assistants, and conversational i...
agenticweb.news
My analysis of Google I/O: Google laid out a big, not always coherent vision for making the web more agent-ready. The strongest signals came from Chrome, while Gemini Spark and AI search raise questions. Also: could Parallel’s Index solve AI’s publisher economics? agenticweb.news/google-agent...
Google's agentic web stack takes shape — but publisher economics remain unresolved
Google used I/O to push Chrome, Search and developer tools toward an agentic web. But the harder question is economic: who gets paid when agents use the web? Index by Parallel offers one possible answ...
agenticweb.news
I’ve just launched Agentic Web News: signals, interviews and analysis on the next phase of the web. I'm using the Ghost platform for this; am hoping to eventually turn this into a subscription newsletter. Check it out if you're intrigued about this new era of the web. agenticweb.news/welcome-to-a...
Welcome to Agentic Web News: signals, interviews and analysis on the next phase of the web
Tracking how the agentic web is taking shape — through market signals, builder interviews, and analysis of the products and standards defining what comes next.
agenticweb.news
The agentic web is becoming a business issue. As AI agents begin to discover, interpret and act on websites, businesses need to rethink what their websites are for. My new post looks at what this means for business leaders, product teams, publishers and developers. ricmac.org/2026/05/13/w...
Why the agentic web matters for businesses
AI agents are changing how businesses are discovered, understood and acted upon online. Here’s what business leaders, product teams, publishers and developers need to rethink.
ricmac.org
What is the agentic web? I’ve published a new post defining the term and placing it in historical context: Read web → Read/write web → Platform web → Agentic web The key point: websites aren’t disappearing. Indeed, I'd argue their role is expanding. ricmac.org/2026/05/08/w...
What Is the Agentic Web? From Read/Write to Agentic
The web is entering a new phase: AI agents are becoming a new class of user. Here’s what the agentic web means, why websites still matter, and how the web is shifting from pages to capabilities.
ricmac.org
AX was the new DX. Now it’s becoming the new UX. In my latest post, I explore how "agent experience" has morphed beyond "developer experience" and become a branch of "user experience". ricmac.org/2026/05/05/a... #AgenticWeb
Agent Experience: Why AX Is Becoming the New UX
AI agents are becoming a new class of user for websites, apps, and platforms. That means Agent Experience is shifting from developer tooling to agent usability.
ricmac.org
Ha, @ernie.tedium.co also mentioned this in a comment, but this is *so* GeoCities :) Which is a good thing, in my book — visual creativity on the web is to be encouraged, in a world of bland social media / Medium / etc designs. Dare I say, maybe even a bit of early MySpace anarchy?
Ernie Smith@ernie.tedium.co · 3mo agoHmmm … so, this is absolutely not what it’s meant for, but @leaflet.pub’s math support makes it possible to do some basic ShortFormBlog-style design in KaTeX. (Wonder what else could be done with this? Maybe something like Typst could be a good fit for this?)
great vision / examples for how "atmospheric websites" can better serve organizers — from global event listings, to shared collections of resources, to interoperable social graphs… exciting space here to explore collaboratively!
Erlend Sogge Heggen@erlend.sh · 4mo agoI want organizers to be as excited as I am about the phase shift happening on the web right now. If we nerds can help the organizers see what we're seeing, which is the potential for a systemic overhaul of the web as we know it, the organizers will understand what they can ask us to build for them.
