TreattheAIagentasaplatform,notafeature

Three boundaries, three reasons to change

The Universal AI Agent backend is split into three folders:

• providers/ — How to talk to a given model vendor. Changes when an SDK updates or a new vendor lands.
• adapters/ — What a given host app exposes (function catalog + handlers). Changes when an app gains or loses a capability.
• core/ — How the agent orchestrates a turn. Changes when the orchestration itself gets smarter.

Why it matters

Without this split, every new app means rebuilding auth, rate limiting, audit logging, and tool-calling shape translation. With it, a new app is an adapter file and a config entry — usually under an hour of work.

The contract

GET  /api/agent/applications
GET  /api/agent/:appId/catalog
POST /api/agent/:appId/chat

That's the entire public surface.

The lesson

If your AI integration leaks vendor names into product code, you're building a feature. If it doesn't, you're building a platform.