About This Tech Radar
What Is This?
This is a tech radar for agent registries, skill marketplaces, and protocol directories — an opinionated snapshot of where to discover MCP servers, AI agents, skills, tools, and the protocols that connect them.
The agentic ecosystem is fragmenting fast. There are now 12,000+ MCP servers, dozens of skill marketplaces, multiple competing agent protocols, and no single "app store" that covers everything. This radar maps the landscape and tells you which registries are worth your time, which are emerging, and which to approach with caution.
The radar is inspired by the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar and built with AOE Technology Radar.
How to Read the Radar
The radar is divided into four quadrants, each covering a different slice of the registry ecosystem:
| Quadrant | What It Covers |
|---|---|
| MCP Ecosystem | Registries, directories, and hosting platforms for discovering Model Context Protocol servers |
| Agent Protocols & Discovery | A2A, ACP, AGNTCY, ANP, AG-UI — the protocols and directory services that let agents find and communicate with each other |
| Skills Marketplaces | The SKILL.md ecosystem — official catalogs, community marketplaces, and security-focused skill directories |
| Agent & Tool Registries | Agent marketplaces, tool integration platforms, and directories for discovering AI agents and capabilities |
Looking for the tools themselves? See the Agentic Engineering radar. For security concerns around these registries, see the Security radar.
Each item on the radar sits in one of four rings:
| Ring | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Adopt | Authoritative and mature. The go-to registry or standard in its category. |
| Trial | Established and useful. Worth integrating into your workflow today. |
| Assess | Emerging or niche. Worth watching and experimenting with, but not yet essential. |
| Hold | Proceed with caution. May have security concerns, unclear governance, or be superseded. |
Why a Separate Registries Radar?
Discovery is becoming a first-class problem in agentic engineering:
- MCP alone has 12,870+ servers across multiple registries — the official registry, Smithery, PulseMCP, Glama, and more. Knowing which to trust matters.
- Three competing agent protocols (A2A, ACP, AGNTCY) each have their own discovery mechanisms, and the landscape is consolidating under the Linux Foundation.
- Skill marketplaces had their first major security incident (ClawHavoc) in early 2026, making registry trust a critical concern.
- No single directory covers everything — you need to know which registries to check for which type of capability.
This radar provides the opinionated layer: not just "what exists" but "what should you actually use."
Contributing
This radar is stored as simple Markdown files in the radar/ directory. Each item is one .md file. You don't need to know JavaScript to contribute — just edit or add a Markdown file and open a pull request.
See the GitHub repository for details.