AI Tool Standardization: The Future of Team Development

Today I learned about two important things that got me thinking about the future of AI development and product building.

The Agent.md Standardization Movement

I discovered an interesting initiative called agent.md that aims to unify AI agent rules across all AI tools. This makes perfect sense because right now, every tool uses its own individual rules - Cursor has cursor rules, Claude uses its own system, GitHub Copilot has different standards. This fragmentation creates real problems for team management.

If you’re working on a team where some people prefer Copilot, others use Cursor or OpenCode, having different rules for each tool makes collaboration unnecessarily complex. A single unified file to set up team standards for AI usage would solve this problem elegantly and make team management much easier.

I really hope all AI tools adopt this standard. It would remove so much friction from collaborative development.

The same issue exists with MCP servers right now - every agent tool uses individual MCP server settings, making everything complex and inflexible. A unified configuration file for MCP servers would be incredibly helpful. I imagine this kind of unified solution will emerge soon.

Rethinking Product Development and Money

I came across a story about a programmer who used AI to rapidly develop products and started earning money - not much, maybe $10-100 per month, but it got me thinking: should I really care about the money at the beginning?

Since yesterday’s hackathon experience, I’ve realized that in the AI era, how to implement isn’t important anymore. The idea is the core. Building products shouldn’t be about immediate money - it should be about practicing my ability to sense and dig out customer requirements.

I can’t practice identifying real customer needs without actually building and testing products in the market. Money becomes the feedback mechanism, not the primary goal.

Rather than focusing purely on software development as a career path, I’m starting to see it differently. Being a software developer means selling your time efficiently, but you’re still just trading time for money. Product building is different - it’s more like an investment. You use your time upfront to build something that can serve customers independently.

Maybe I’ll make $0 income from my first products, maybe even negative income due to setup costs. But I think this is worthwhile for long-term practice in developing that “customer opportunity sensing” skill.

The goal isn’t immediate profit - it’s building the ability to smell out opportunities and understand what people actually need.