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A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

a2ui.org

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Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#41

Post by awei »

I see how useful a universal UI language working across platforms is, but when I look at some examples from this protocol, I have the feeling it will eventually converge to what we already have, html. Instead of making all platforms support this new universal markup language, why not make them support html, which some already do, and which llms are already trained on.

Some examples from the documentation: { "id": "settings-tabs", "component": { "Tabs": { "tabItems": [ {"title": {"literalString": "General"}, "child": "general-settings"}, {"title": {"literalString": "Privacy"}, "child": "privacy-settings"}, {"title": {"literalString": "Advanced"}, "child": "advanced-settings"} ] } } }

{ "id": "email-input", "component": { "TextField": { "label": {"literalString": "Email Address"}, "text": {"path": "/user/email"}, "textFieldType": "shortText" } } }

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#42

Post by hurturue »

codethief wrote: post #9

> A2UI lets agents send declarative component descriptions that clients render using their own native widgets. It's like having agents speak a universal UI language . (emphasis mine) Sounds like agents are suddenly able to do what developers have failed at for decades: Writing platform-independent UIs. Maybe this works for simple use cases but beyond that I'm skeptical.

platform independent UIs exist - HTML and Electron

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#43

Post by epec254 »

awei wrote: post #41

I see how useful a universal UI language working across platforms is, but when I look at some examples from this protocol, I have the feeling it will eventually converge to what we already have, html. Instead of making all platforms support this new universal markup language, why not make them support html, which some already do, and which llms are already trained on. Some examples from the documentation: { "id": "se…

A key challenge with HTML is client side trust. How do I enable an agent platform (say Gemini, Claude, OpenAI) to render UI from an untrusted 3p agent that’s integrated with the platform? This is a common scenario in the enterprise version of these apps - eg I want to use the agent from (insert saas vendor) alongside my company’s home grown agents and data.

Most HTML is actually HTML+CSS+JS - IMO, accepting this is a code injection attack waiting to happen. By abstracting to JSON, a client can safely render UI without this concern.

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#44

Post by awei »

epec254 wrote: post #43
awei wrote: post #41

I see how useful a universal UI language working across platforms is, but when I look at some examples from this protocol, I have the feeling it will eventually converge to what we already have, html. Instead of making all platforms support this new universal markup language, why not make them support html, which some already do, and which llms are already trained on. Some examples from the documentation: { "id": "se…

A key challenge with HTML is client side trust. How do I enable an agent platform (say Gemini, Claude, OpenAI) to render UI from an untrusted 3p agent that’s integrated with the platform? This is a common scenario in the enterprise version of these apps - eg I want to use the agent from (insert saas vendor) alongside my company’s home grown agents and data. Most HTML is actually HTML+CSS+JS - IMO, accepting this is a…

Right this makes sense, I wonder if it would then be a good idea to abstract html to JSON, making it impossible to include css and js into it

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#45

Post by epec254 »

awei wrote: post #44
epec254 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key challenge with HTML is client side trust. How do I enable an agent platform (say Gemini, Claude, OpenAI) to render UI from an untrusted 3p agent that’s integrated with the platform? This is a common scenario in the enterprise version of these apps - eg I want to use the agent from (insert saas vendor) alongside my company’s home grown agents and data. Most HTML is actually HTML+CSS+JS - IMO, accepting this is a…

Right this makes sense, I wonder if it would then be a good idea to abstract html to JSON, making it impossible to include css and js into it

Curious to learn more what you are thinking?

One challenge is you do likely want JS to process/capture the data - for example, taking the data from a form and turning it into json to send back to the agent

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#46

Post by oooyay »

awei wrote: post #44
epec254 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key challenge with HTML is client side trust. How do I enable an agent platform (say Gemini, Claude, OpenAI) to render UI from an untrusted 3p agent that’s integrated with the platform? This is a common scenario in the enterprise version of these apps - eg I want to use the agent from (insert saas vendor) alongside my company’s home grown agents and data. Most HTML is actually HTML+CSS+JS - IMO, accepting this is a…

Right this makes sense, I wonder if it would then be a good idea to abstract html to JSON, making it impossible to include css and js into it

If you play with A2UIs generator that's effectively what it does, just layer of abstraction or two above what you're describing.

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#47

Post by turnsout »

wongarsu wrote: post #15

I wouldn't want this anywhere near production, but for rapid prototyping this seems great. People famously can't articulate what they want until they get to play around with it. This lets you skip right to the part where you realize they want something completely different from what was first described without having to build the first iteration by hand

Honestly the point of this is not to help app developers—it's to replace the need for apps altogether.

The vision here is that you can chat with Gemini, and it can generate an app on the fly to solve your problem. For the visualized landscaping app, it could just connect to landscapers via their Google Business Profile.

As an app developer, I'm actually not even against this. The amount of human effort that goes into creating and maintaining thousands of duplicative apps is wasteful.

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#48

Post by awei »

oooyay wrote: post #46
awei wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right this makes sense, I wonder if it would then be a good idea to abstract html to JSON, making it impossible to include css and js into it

If you play with A2UIs generator that's effectively what it does, just layer of abstraction or two above what you're describing.

That's what I thought too skimming through the documentation, my thinking is that since it does that, which makes sense to avoid script injection, why not do it with "jsonized" html.

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#49

Post by lunar_mycroft »

epec254 wrote: post #43
awei wrote: post #41

I see how useful a universal UI language working across platforms is, but when I look at some examples from this protocol, I have the feeling it will eventually converge to what we already have, html. Instead of making all platforms support this new universal markup language, why not make them support html, which some already do, and which llms are already trained on. Some examples from the documentation: { "id": "se…

A key challenge with HTML is client side trust. How do I enable an agent platform (say Gemini, Claude, OpenAI) to render UI from an untrusted 3p agent that’s integrated with the platform? This is a common scenario in the enterprise version of these apps - eg I want to use the agent from (insert saas vendor) alongside my company’s home grown agents and data. Most HTML is actually HTML+CSS+JS - IMO, accepting this is a…

If the JSON protocol in question supports arbitrary behaviors and styles, then you still have an injection problem even over JSON. If it doesn't support them you don't need to support those in an HTML protocol either, and you can solve the injection problem the way we already do: sanitizing the HTML to remove all/some (depending on your specific requirements) script tags, event listeners, etc.

Re: A2UI: A Protocol for Agent-Driven Interfaces

#50

Post by [deleted] »

turnsout wrote: post #47
wongarsu wrote: post #15

I wouldn't want this anywhere near production, but for rapid prototyping this seems great. People famously can't articulate what they want until they get to play around with it. This lets you skip right to the part where you realize they want something completely different from what was first described without having to build the first iteration by hand

Honestly the point of this is not to help app developers—it's to replace the need for apps altogether. The vision here is that you can chat with Gemini, and it can generate an app on the fly to solve your problem. For the visualized landscaping app, it could just connect to landscapers via their Google Business Profile. As an app developer, I'm actually not even against this. The amount of human effort that goes into…

[deleted]
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