This article is the second in a two-part series. The first article can be found here: Where are you placing your CX chips? Generalist Super Agent or Multiple Specialized Agents?
The smartest play isn’t an all-knowing Super-Agent or a swarm of siloed specialist agents—it’s a hybrid: a powerful generalist that steers the conversation, flanked by specialist agents that fire off API calls, search the web, tap knowledge bases, and trigger tools on demand.
To take full advantage of multi-agent modes, an agent must "talk" to: specialist agents, super agents, data sources, legacy data sources, and humans.
Yet most IT budgets still hemorrhage cash wiring endpoints together: for every integration dollar, up to 40 ¢ disappears into brittle, one-off plumbing that never grows revenue. Open, reusable protocols flip that spend—build the connector once, reuse it everywhere—so the same budget funds features that earn money instead of patching pipes.
This guide shows revenue and CX leaders how to sidestep agent-sprawl and integration chaos—and why Cast’s open-protocol fabric puts you two steps ahead of every other vendor.
Listen to the audiogram that complements this technical article for a more immersive understanding.
Here’s how Cast ensures your agents talk to each other—and your data and people—without chaos.
Open protocols give agents a shared language. Wire it once, reuse it everywhere—no more brittle one-off connectors.
Why P&L-focused leaders care
Agents need to talk to data, each other, and humans.
Agent ↔︎ Data: MCP, MCP proxy bridge
Agent ↔︎ Agent: ACP, A2A
Agent ↔︎ Human: A2H, H2A
Below are five key protocols that form an end-to-end fabric for data access, inter-agent hand-offs, and human collaboration.
MCP is often described as USB for AI.
It is a read-only, vendor-neutral socket that lets agents access live data (databases, SaaS APIs, files, IoT) without bespoke integrations.
It solves the wild-west problem of agents scraping data through ad-hoc scripts. Choose MCP whenever a model needs trustworthy raw data (e.g., “Claude, pull Q2 churn from Snowflake”).
Example: An AI CSM fetches customer usage metrics from Snowflake and blends them into a renewal forecast—no new ETL required.
Think of MPB as a smart modem: it wraps older REST or SOAP services so they pretend to speak MCP (and A2A) until the vendor upgrades.
It solves legacy lock-in—use it when you must integrate a non-compliant system today and don’t want to rebuild tomorrow.
What it is
A thin wrapper that lets any REST-only or webhook-only app—HubSpot, Zendesk, you name it—behave like a native MCP/A2A participant.
Why execs care
Hybrid reality: Pure A2A is the north star, but > 95 % of SaaS still speak REST. MPB closes that gap—today.
Example: A legacy CRM exposes a renewal endpoint; MPB masks its quirks so every agent treats it like a modern MCP source.
A conveyor belt for tasks: messages carry IDs, retries, deadlines, and audit trails so nothing drops between agents.
It solves “lost-in-Slack” hand-offs inside large orgs. Use ACP when two or more internal agents share work (e.g., onboarding → renewal).
Example: An Onboarding Agent flags low adoption; ACP routes a “nudge” task to the Education Agent, which tracks completion before closing the loop.
A publish-and-subscribe directory where agents advertise skills (“I can provision servers”) and accept partner jobs.
It solves brittle B2B integrations—choose A2A when you want on-demand collaboration across companies or clouds.
Example: Cast’s CSM Agent delegates a log-analysis request to the customer’s Support Bot, which then returns a remediation link.
A smart escalation layer: agents decide when to loop in a human, picking the right person, channel, and context.
It solves moments where empathy or judgment boosts revenue or mitigates risk—use A2H when a human touch can save, upsell, or de-risk.
Example: Usage spikes trigger an A2H alert to the VP via email (complete with benchmarks); after approval, the agent resumes automated upsell steps.
The mirror image of A2H—a secure command interface so people can instruct agents to act on their behalf.
It solves high-trust tasks that are faster or safer for an agent to execute. Invoke H2A whenever a human needs precise, error-free action.
Example: A finance manager tells the Payments Agent to issue a refund via Stripe, or a support rep asks the Security Agent to trigger 2-factor authentication for a user.
With these six protocols in place, your hybrid agent ecosystem—generalist strategists plus deep specialists—can share data, delegate work, and involve humans only when it truly counts.
BTW, if you are running cast.app agents, all the complexity solved for you.
Benefits
(Live demos: Escalate to VP, Calendly auto-link, CSM → Feedback Agent)
Cast.app weaves five pieces of connective tissue—MCP, MCP Proxy Bridge, ACP, A2A, and A2H—into one seamless fabric so your AI CSMs, Feedback Agents, and Support Agents operate like a single, revenue-focused brain.
What this means for leaders
Scale revenue, not teams—Cast.app handles the wiring.
[TO DO FIGURE 04 • Footer banner with Cast.app logo + “Scale revenue, not teams.”]