AI Agent 时代的文档与支付：Mintlify 与 Coinbase 对谈

you guys all coming. Um, hope everyone

is having a good start to their day.

Um, nice to meet you. I'm Hamby. I'm a

co-founder and CTO at Mintlify.

Uh, Mintlify is a series B company based

in San Francisco and we power developer

documentation for companies like

Coinbase.

Um, would you like to give an intro?

Lincoln. I'm the head of AI product at

Coinbase, uh, which you might know as a

crypto company, but is widely expanding

into all sorts of assets and uh,

payments as well and there's also an

agentic angle, which we'll be talking

about here shortly.

Um,

do you want to go and ask the first

question?

of kind of fireside chat back and forth,

talk a little bit about how how we view

the world today, how our respective

companies are building for this agentic

future and where we kind of think things

will will go. So, Hamby, can you kick us

off with uh, with a question here?

Sorry, I'm just

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This one. So, yeah, how how do we think

about agents becoming the the primary

actor on the internet and the primary

thing that people are using as as part

of the uh, their internet experience? I

can go tell an agent to go set up

Coinbase for agents. It's going to find

our docs and do it all entirely for me.

How does this change what's important

when you're thinking about how you're

building docs?

founded in 2022, so pre-chat chat GPT,

uh, GPT-3 specifically, I would say.

Um, and I would say that previously

there was like much more of an emphasis

on design and front end, which I

personally love design and we are

definitely like a design-led company

still. So, it's kind of still it kind of

makes me sad. I'm not going to lie, the

fact that like the agents do not see

your website and they do not care what

it looks like or what the branding of

it. And so, what ends up mattering a lot

more is like things like page size.

Like, is it taking up a bunch of like

the context window?

Uh like the the content being accurate

because like an agent can like set like

read your docs and set it up, and then

if it runs into like a little friction

point, it's just going to stop. It's

just like it's not going to like debug

it. It's It might just like It might try

and try to like brute force it, but then

it can also just as easily churn to

another product. And so, I do think

like, you know, like coding agents have

made the world like move so much faster,

and it's important that like I like

engineering or EPD specifically is like

seeing so many like uh like productivity

gains, and uh like the rest of the org

kind of needs to catch up, you know? And

I I think the only way in order for us

to all move at the speed that like the

productivity gains that engineering is

seeing is to kind of use AI to kind of

keep up. And that means like, of course,

it's a lot more subjective like whether

the docs are good or like, you know,

writing AI writing I I like I personally

like I'm still figuring that out. Um but

I do think like setting up automations

in order to ensure that like uh like

things like do not go stale is like a

very very important. Um and I'm curious

for yourself. So, now that like uh

agents are making transactions on the

internet, how does that change how

Coinbase thinks about uh like

the like

like just transactions in general?

agents and and stablecoins as a as a

payment rail have sort of happened at

the same time. And traditionally, you

see two inflection points come together

in in previous eras of technology, like

for example, mobile phones at the same

time that you have 4G LTE. And this

opens up a lot of new opportunities, but

it also opens up an opportunity for us

to be disintermediated or disrupted by a

new nascent startup or company. So,

there's there's really two ways that we

think about it. One is what are these

innovative products that we can build

and use uh and and market specifically

toward agents and build for agents so

that they have this experience that is

otherwise completely not possible in the

previous era of the internet. But then

also too, what are the core parts of

Coinbase's business that we need to make

accessible to agents such that people

continue using Coinbase as for our bread

and butter use case of of trading and

money management and whatnot. And the

way that I view those two things is

around how we make our entire business

accessible via APIs. So, how can we take

all of the functionality that's

available to humans and translate that

into a world where agents can interact

with it. And though that's possible with

browser use, it's not exactly the most

ideal situation. There's a lot of

authentication and and security

concerns, especially when you're dealing

with finances. You don't want to give

your agent sort of unfettered access to

your account. You want the right

guardrails, limitations, all of that in

place. So, to to to build this defensive

hedge for our company and allow us to

survive in the AI era, we are taking

this it's sort of an analog to web

shifting to mobile, but now mobile

shifting to agents and making everything

that was accessible for mobile users

inside their their phone back a decade

ago when people were saying, "I would

never bank on my phone. That sounds

crazy." Now everyone does it more than

they do even on their on their web

browser.

Doing that same thing, but now making it

available to agents adding in all of the

safety nuances that you would need such

that today you may say, "Why would I

ever give an AI access to my account to

manage money?" And 10 years from now,

you won't even be looking at your

account at all, just be happening

through your through your agent.

like specific advantages of crypto being

the solution for this?

So, a lot of what we've seen with early

traction around X402, which is our

internet native payment standard that we

have now externalized into its own

separate foundation. That's that's

co-run and governed by Cloudflare,

Stripe, Amex, Mastercard, Visa, and so

on. The the crypto angle, I think is

primarily around the ability for digital

dollars to be sent uh cheap, fast,

permissionlessly anywhere in the world.

So, anyone who's running a business and

wants their AI agent to accept a

transaction can do so. And though we've

seen this a lot with existing sort of

card-based or stripe link style

solutions, one of the areas where I

think crypto has a particular role to

play is around micro transactions and

the ability for an agent to spend 1/1000

of a cent, even 1/1000000 of a cent, to

access an API or a service or even a

paywalled website very, very seamlessly

and and trivially.

here? Like are we already seeing agents

making transactions via crypto? Like

pretty

pretty

exponential increase in the amount of

transactions that are being made. In the

past year, we've seen around 100 million

agentic transactions actually, all

happening on chain, all publicly

available for anyone to audit.

Uh all of those are are primarily for

this use case of of interacting with

APIs. So in this previous version of the

world, you would have to go to whatever

website you wanted to interact with the

service, you'd have to fund that

account, you'd have to get an API key,

and then hand that to your agent. Only

then you can really start to interact

with things. But now we're seeing a

world where if you just give an agent a

wallet or some sort of financial

account, it can go off and pay in a

one-off basis for different APIs. And

that's been a really resonant use case

with with this core audience of of early

adopters of agentic payments.

people connecting to your wallet via API

or like the agent purchasing APIs or

APIs. So

like if every the the current way the

internet works is every time you uh

it'd be like if every time you went to a

grocery store, you had to walk in, you

had to buy a gift card for that specific

grocery store, you had to sign up for

their loyalty account, and only then you

can start paying for stuff. And that's

how it feels whenever you go to a

website, you have to get API keys, you

have to fund that account specifically,

and only then your agent can start

interacting. But as we give these agents

more financial independence and

autonomy, they're able to do things

without having to go through this

arduous human blocking process. And in

the same way that I can only do so much

on the internet without having access to

money, agents are very much the same

way. Giving them access to money is how

you increase their autonomy and

ultimately get to the point where they

can go do things if you just tell your

cloud agent, I want to go generate an

image, it should be able to do that even

if it doesn't have a connection to that

today. It should just pay for that

service, pay the 25 cents or whatever it

might be.

APIs in general, would you say, to make

it more agent friendly?

name of the game. You can wrap that in

an MCP and that's all fine and dandy if

that changes at some point in the

future. We'll see, but uh it's it's

really the the the APIs and that

underlying

uh

access to your service in a way that

gives makes it so much more accessible

to people in like a safe, friendly,

intuitive manner.

on like MCP versus CLI versus API.

going to be that fundamental layer

underneath it all and then the MCP is

nice for adding additional context and

nuance that required within like a

natural language style setting and and

CLI is is broadly the same with the

additional requirement of having like a

terminal associated with it, but between

all of them, I think it's kind of like a

you have to have all of them and it's

how easy AI assisted development has

gotten. It kind of feels like you're

just fundamentally wrapping them in in

whatever way, shape, or form that the

agent can can use. And beyond that,

there's, you know, pros and cons to each

of them individually, but I think we're

we're far from the end game of how these

tools evolve and and where they start

going.

Like, where do you think the world is

going to be headed towards?

particularly, my my sort of core

fundamental belief is that granting

agents more financial independence by

giving them access to money and and

authorizing them to spend that is how we

create increasing levels of autonomy and

long-running agents that just lead

ultimately to better outcomes. If I can

get my agent uh the ability to go pay

for information on paywalled sites that

otherwise wouldn't previously be

available, that would allow it to run

overnight and do even deeper research

settings that I could do if I just gave

it access to the public open internet.

Similarly, if I allow my agent to in a

in a future version of the world, say I

want my agent to go set up a company for

me and form an LLC. Maybe it can't do

that entirely on its own, but maybe it

can go hire a lawyer off of a you know a

Fiverr equivalent or or rent a human or

any one of these services and and an

accountant to handle this work. It

there's a really interesting concept

from the crypto space. It's called a DAO

like a DAO. It's a decentralized

autonomous organization. And this has

been around for for several years now,

but it's really manifested itself as

basically just

another form of bureaucracy where

there's a handful of people trying to

make decisions and it just it just

always kind of crumbled. It never really

achieved that whole vision. And the

original vision was automation at the

core and humans at the edges and you run

an organization that way. And I think

agents with access to money are a very

clear example of how we're going to see

that vision finally come to life.

curiosity cuz I personally do not know

crypto very well and it's very

interesting to see how like I guess like

a lot of these theses that were like

kind of built previously are kind of

coming into fruition with AI in play.

very validated in a lot of senses where

it's like you simply can't just give an

AI access to a bank account. A crypto

wallet is a nice way to provably give it

access and and ownership over over

money, but I would love to hear your

your perspective and vision on how the

world evolves as well as as agents

becoming the primary adopters and

ingesters of of

documentation and how that changes your

strategy at Menthafy.

had on APIs cuz that's also my take.

Like it's it feels like a lot of

software companies are kind of becoming

more developer-centric. And you know, we

do envision a world where everybody is

using like this technology, but right

now like the earliest adopters are

developers and also the agents actually

speak like the language of developers

because

like it's all in code, right? And like

they they're really good at bash.

They're really good at CLI commands. And

so definitely think at least like for

now like doing that and all like

software companies should be really

investing in APIs and

uh these things that like seem a little

bit traditional honestly.

Um and also I I think like what you said

also reinforces the fact that the like

front end is not mattering as much

either. Like

make make everything avail- accessible

to agents by like

by creating APIs essentially.

Um one interesting statistic that I want

to share is that at the beginning of the

year across all Netlify sites, we had

around like 10% of like the viewership

was agents and now uh we're closer to

like 80%. Um and it's kind of funny we

have like this internal tracker at our

company where we uh we just track like

how what what the percentage is and

we're like we internally like take bets

on like where we think it's going to go

and it's been growing faster than we

even think. And it's not like human

viewership is going down, but I think

that like the agent viewership is just

going so much higher. Um I always like

to like it's it's weird because like

agents act kind of similarly to humans

and uh and different in in many

different ways, but like I like kind of

using like the agent terms on humans in

the sense that like we as humans have

very small context windows in comparison

to the agents like and they have much

more like you know, time to just like

like ingest so much more content and be

able to grok that well and I think

that's like really the the crux of like

the big surge that we're all just like

seeing right now with like how agents

are impacting businesses and like how we

work. Um

it's it's it's insane like the like the

the growth like over the past years is

insane. Uh like uh open claw like was

literally like this year and that's that

also kind of feels like forever ago.

in on something you said about uh

companies investing in like the

traditional things and also what you

made previously around humans writing

documentation as opposed to AI. I'm

really curious to learn a little bit

more about your perspective on that and

if we'll always sort of need this human

touch to to write documentation or or or

provide a nuance that then an agent can

go ingest or if there's a world where

this starts to become a a more automated

process for teams and how teams are

interacting with this uh this uh pattern

today.

about like human writing versus like

AI-generated writing and where my takes

fall in that. And I do think that for

creative prose or narrative writing,

uh it's very important to have that

human touch. And I don't know how

terminally online this room is, but I am

quite terminally online. And there is so

much conversation about uh you know,

like uh software engineers like using uh

coding for writing all their code, but

then religiously like writing like uh

prose by hand. Like, you know, when

you're like giving a document to

somebody else within the team, like do

you decide to AI-generate it or do you

decide to write it yourself? There's

starting to become like a class of

documents and like division happening

now. And so, I definitely think like

um it's

I like

I always kind of like uh teeter around

like, you know, going towards tradition

versus like going towards like a new

paradigm of like everything is changing

and we need to change the way that we

think. And I think that it's we're all

figuring it out as we go. I I I'm not

going to lie, I do think I had a point

in time where I was like feeling a

little AI psychosis, where I 'm like, oh,

like, I don't need to talk to anyone.

Like, I'll just talk to my MCPs and I'll

be able to get all the insights and

everything. I definitely think,

especially as a product person, I'm also

curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Like, it's still important to talk to

people and figure out like what what

what the real pain points and use cases

are today uh in spite of all the

innovations that are changing.

Um but uh

yeah, to to kind of go back to your

question,

um like

I think for technical writing

particularly, like there is like a

process of gathering the insights and

then like putting it in, in which I do

think like the technical writing like

portion of it can be automated. Like, I

think it's very tedious to find all the

related PRs, find all the related

context, all everything that 's happening

within Slack, all the decisions being

made, and then like put that into

something succinct, and then figure out

like where uh and like amidst your

corpus of like content like you need to

like inject it in. I think like all of

that can be automated.

the product perspective to your point

that it's it's very difficult to find

any sort of insights or takeaways from

just interacting with an agent. And if

anything it just hallucinates and make

you prioritize the wrong wrong things.

Um if my

reckoning of time is right we probably

have time for one more question. So I'd

be I'd be very curious to hear from you

what is the most common fit fitfall you

see teams who are building for AI and

building documentation for AI uh fall

into and and and how that sort of

impacts what they're attempting to drive

the AI to do and what you would

recommend to to make this whole process

much more seamless.

Okay, this is going to sound like a a my

own plug, but I do think that uh like

it's the whole like build versus buy. I

think is like the question that everyone

is constantly asking for software

products. And I do think that you know,

when you're deciding what to do whether

it's documentation or any other SAS that

you have within your company to like

improve your productivity or like not

your main thing, I do think that there

is like it's you're either deciding to

maintain something yourself or uh like

offload that to another team that's

literally spending like every waking

hour thinking about it. Um and so I do

think like things are getting more

competitive with AI, things are moving

faster with AI and I think like every

company should be focused on whatever

their number one value proposition is

and it's so easy to kind of forget about

uh the maintenance costs of things, you

know? I think that's like what we're

kind of seeing a lot in enterprise sales

as well where it's like "Hey guys, we

built this during a hackathon and nobody

wants to maintain it." Like what like

like if we were in the business of doing

what you guys are doing, we would be

building your business, you know? Um and

so I think that like uh really

remembering and I think this has always

been the case. I think just AI like

accentuates this a lot more. It's like

"Hey, we could build it, but like do we

want to maintain it?" Um and I think

that uh this is a question that we also

ask ourselves when building products.

Cuz we could be building everything.

And especially with how fast-moving the

agent space is and and and the way and

manner in which they crawl sites and

whatnot. It feels like there's a million

different standards and whatnot. So,

having just like a

constant view on what the state of the

art is and having that handled without

having to do the maintenance. I've seen

that firsthand with hackathon projects

and whatnot. So, yeah, couldn't agree

more.

Lincoln.

sitting through this. Thank you.