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Dev.to
5/11/2026
MCP, A2A, and Pilot Protocol Are Not Competing. Your Agent Stack Probably Needs All Three.

MCP, A2A, and Pilot Protocol Are Not Competing. Your Agent Stack Probably Needs All Three.

Short summary

MCP, A2A, and Pilot Protocol operate at different layers of an agent stack and are complementary rather than competitive. MCP is the vertical layer connecting agents to external tools through a standardized interface, while A2A is the horizontal application layer enabling agents to delegate structured work to other agents and track results. Pilot Protocol provides the network foundation—handling encryption, NAT traversal, and agent discovery—making direct agent-to-agent communication possible.

  • •MCP: vertical layer connecting agents to external tools via standardized JSON-RPC interface
  • •A2A: horizontal application layer for agent-to-agent work delegation and result tracking
  • •Pilot Protocol: network foundation handling encryption, NAT traversal, and agent discovery

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.

#ai-agents#ai-tools#market-trend
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