Agent-First Tool API: A Semantic Interface Paradigm for Enterprise AI Agent Systems

As AI agents transition from research prototypes to enterprise production systems, the tool interfaces they consume remain rooted in human-oriented CRUD paradigms. This paper identifies five fundamental architectural mismatches between conventional APIs and autonomous agent requirements: exact-identifier dependence, rendering-oriented responses, single-shot interaction assumptions, user-equivalent authorization, and opaque error semantics. We propose the Agent-First Tool API paradigm, comprising three integrated mechanisms: (1) a Six-Verb Semantic Protocol that decomposes tool interactions into search, resolve, preview, execute, verify, and recover phases; (2) a Normalized Tool Contract (...

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