Landscape

Executive Summary
Current “agent marketplaces” are platform-locked catalogs (Microsoft, Google/Oracle), governance-first registries (Covasavant), protocol-centric hosts (TrueFoundry with MCP/A2A), and payment rails (Skyfire). None provides a neutral packaging + execution standard. APS fills the gap as OCI-like packaging for agents.

Players & Angles - TrueFoundry / Agent Protocols (MCP/A2A): strong tool interop; less emphasis on portable packaging. - Covasavant: governance catalog; good enterprise fit; unclear packaging portability. - Microsoft Marketplace: robust commerce + compliance; proprietary offer model; not agent-native packaging. - Google/Oracle Marketplaces: mature listing/commerce; lacks agent packaging contract. - Skyfire: agent payments & identity; assumes an execution substrate elsewhere.

Risks of today’s landscape - Vendor lock-in on run formats and catalogs
- Weak portability into enterprise VPCs
- Fragmented “capability” descriptions (no shared schema)
- Compliance claims not machine-verifiable

APS Advantages - Run anywhere: local, VPC, hosted, or hybrid
- Open manifest: inputs/outputs/tools policy defined
- Trust: signatures + provenance hooks
- Composable with others: Card for humans, MCP/AGP/TDF for interop, compliance claims for governance
- Registry protocol: Search, publish, pull; monetization pluggable

Go-to-Market 1) Win developers with spec + CLI + examples
2) Land enterprise pilots (policy + provenance)
3) Bridge to protocols (MCP/AGP) via adapters
4) Minimal registry → federation → foundation governance

Adoption Signals to Watch - Framework support (LangChain/LlamaIndex/etc.) announcing APS template generators
- Cloud vendors acknowledging APS manifests in their catalogs
- Security teams referencing APS policy/provenance in reviews