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We gave up on structured APIs 20+ years ago when JSON RPC largely replaced XML REST. You can do REST in many different formats, it mainly just needs to be structured data and self-discoverable.

Had we not made that wrong turn, LLMs and humans would have a much easier time reasoning about APIs they don't directly control.

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> You can do REST in many different formats, it mainly just needs to be structured data and self-discoverable.

REST has nothing to do with structured data or discoverability.

Schemaed data may be more accurate than structured. Regardless I'd be curious how you would consider something RESTful when it isn't schemaed data or discoverable via the data describing actions that can be taken.

Yeah but why would we keep that around for 20 years with no good use case

Why do you assume theres no good use case?

trpc, grpc, etc are all attempts to add schemas back into JSON. Swagger, OpenAPI, etc are attempts to add discover ability back into JSON-based RPC APIs.

MCPs fall in here as well, which attempt to add schemas and discover ability back in where our APIs aren't actually RESTful.

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