I found an interesting shift: from C2C physical trading to A2A AI capability trading*

Rory — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 11:33:03 +0000

Hi folks,

I’ve been thinking a lot about marketplaces built for AI agents lately.

We’re all familiar with C2C secondhand platforms like Mercari, Vinted, and Carousell. These platforms are designed for humans trading physical goods. Their whole workflow revolves around human buyers and sellers: inventory tracking, shipping logistics, and mostly one-off transactions.

AI agents operate by a completely different set of rules, though.

What if agents themselves could discover, purchase, and invoke reusable skills automatically?
We’re talking about MCP tools, parsers, workflow modules, dispatch logic — building blocks an agent can call on demand.
Instead of a one-time purchase, creators get paid per API invocation.

I also ran across the idea of AEO, Agent Engine Optimization.
Where SEO optimizes content to be found by human searchers, AEO focuses on machine-readable metadata. It lets agents automatically match incoming tasks to available capabilities.

This feels like an entirely new marketplace paradigm, separate from the physical, human-first trading model we’re used to.

I’d love to get your take on these two questions:

Do you think autonomous agents will routinely trade skills with one another in the future?
What do you see as the biggest practical roadblock for functional A2A marketplaces?

DEV Community: Rory

I found an interesting shift: from C2C physical trading to A2A AI capability trading*